To Conquer Death by Rainne

Disclaimers: Dakota and Mercedes belong to me; everyone else belongs to the Great Joss.

Summary: The Council of Watchers is determined to destroy the threat to themselves.

"For it shall come to pass in the latter days, in the place of the sun, that the Chosen One shall initiate the destruction of the Watchers. She herself shall turn and face the sun, and shall ally with the sorceress. She shall conquer Death and live forever, even to the end of the age, and from the get of the witch shall the new order be sprung. This is the prophecy."

Carefully recorded by the scribes of the Council in that time, the prophecy was known to all and researched carefully in order to try and determine its meanings, and to perhaps divine when it would take place. After all, "latter days" is an awfully general term. But as the years passed, those who knew about the Prophecy of Rebirth died off. Eventually, the Prophecy was known only to the Head of the Council, who passed it on to his successor when he retired, in order that the new Head might be able to study it and make plans for its eventual fulfillment.

Sometime in the muddy years between then and now, it became known as the Prophecy of Destruction, and the plans made for its fulfillment became plans of watching, waiting, and attempted thwarting. For even the Watcher's Council is not infallible, and even those most accustomed to mystical powers can forget that prophecies, while often fulfilled in unexpected ways, can never be truly escaped.

When Quentin Travers became Head of the Watcher's Council and received the Prophecy, he resolved in his arrogance and ignorance that any Slayer under his Council should be strictly controlled and not permitted any possible opportunity to fulfill it. He succeeded quite well for the most part, identifying potentials and making certain that they were trained strictly by only the best Watchers. For two decades, his plan worked perfectly.

The hitch came in 1995, when the Council discovered to its collective horror that two potential Slayers had been missed—and that they were in fact the next two Slayers in line.

A Watcher was dispatched immediately to find young Buffy Summers, and was successful only three short days after the death of the current Slayer, which activated Buffy. He successfully began her training which, unfortunately, was abruptly halted by his death.

The other potential Slayer, the one who would be called upon Buffy's death, proved elusive. Her family no longer lived in the place where they had when she was identified, and tracking them down proved harder than was at first anticipated. Fortunately, however, they were finally located. Her Watcher was sent to make contact with her and had in fact located her home when the Council seers suddenly reported that the girl was dead. How she died was a mystery, and the seers could not find it out, but the line shifted to the next potential, a young Jamaican girl named Kendra.

When Buffy died, activating Kendra, and then was revived, Quentin Travers sat up and took notice. But soon he breathed easier, having assured himself that she was not capable of fulfilling the prophecy. The girl wasn't immortal, just lucky. A fluke.

Then, one night, one of Travers' operatives came to him with a recording of a telephone conversation that had been recorded, unknown to the two speakers: a Council employee named Jonathan Edgerton, and one Rupert Giles, ex-Watcher and current helper and confidante to semi-rogue Slayer Buffy Summers. The things that Giles asked Edgerton to research were nothing short of terrifying, and upon learning that the call had been received over three weeks before being brought to his attention, Quentin Travers immediately dived into the Council records to see if his suspicions were accurate.

His hand trailed down the list of names of girls identified as potential Slayers, checking the notations as to which girls had Watchers, which girls could be successfully removed from their families for more intensive training, and which girls, as occasionally happened, had died before being Called. His finger stopped at one particular name, bearing just such a mark, and trembled as he read the name over and over, whispering it out loud to himself as though by saying it, he could make it disappear. But it did not, and the words stared up boldly at him from the page.

The sun was just peeking over the tops of the palm trees as three figures, arms slung across each other's shoulders, ambled out of the Restfield Cemetery and headed down the street. The wan light of the new day illuminated the trio while also seeming to drain some of their color, leaving them looking almost like a sepia-toned film of themselves as they strolled along. They looked tired and all of them bore marks of a struggle, as though they had been brawling. They all bore bruises and scrapes, were all dirty, and one had a torn shirt; but for all of that, they also appeared to be in extremely high spirits.

"Six vamps, two Veralnis demons and a lead on a coven of apocalyptic Satan-worshippers... what night! I feel positively giddy," teased the dark-haired one. "In fact, I think I feel like dancing!" With those words she took the hands of the blonde, who laughed and followed her in a sort of demented two-step that turned itself into the Electric Slide on acid and ended them both on either side of their companion, a laughing redhead.

"Ooh, look!" the blonde exclaimed. "A pretty girl. Just in time for smoochies!" She wrapped her arms around the redhead's waist and kissed her thoroughly, leaving them both quite breathless.

"Buffy!" the redhead exclaimed when she was finally released. Her face was flushed and she was obviously going to say something else, when suddenly arms were around her waist from behind her, as well, and a gentle set of teeth settled in the spot where her shoulder and neck joined. The merest touch of sharp fangs, combined with a gentle sucking sensation on her skin, caused her to gasp and fall silent.

Buffy stepped forward again and captured Willow's lips with her own as Dakota drew her fangs along the back of the redhead's neck, causing Willow to shiver with sensual pleasure. Finally the redhead gasped out one word. "Home." The three women immediately joined hands and moved rapidly toward their home with no further conversation or hesitation.

The house was empty when the three women arrived, and Buffy was silently grateful that Dawn and Mercedes had been invited to a slumber party at one of their friends' homes. They entered the house and went upstairs to the quiet of the master bedroom.

It had been four weeks since Dakota had relinquished her place as Willow's lover, and in those four weeks, the three women had come to a startling revelation.

A long night of patrolling which had included several vamps and culminated in the destruction of a nest of ten who were attempting to raise a baby bezoar left both Slayer and Daywalker wired and jumpy as they turned onto Revello Drive near 2 a.m. They were working off some of their energy by slinging verbal barbs at one another, and as they climbed the steps to Dakota's empty house, planning to raid the refrigerator here where they needn't be silent before Buffy went home, the teasing took on a sudden sexual innuendo that rapidly built an almost palpable tension between the two women.

As they stood in the kitchen together, wolfing down submarine sandwiches and barbecue potato chips, Buffy had a sudden flash of memory—Faith in the Bronze, remarking on the "funny" way that slaying made one "hungry and horny." Before she quite realized she was speaking, she'd quoted that line to Dakota. The Daywalker turned and stared at her, eyes wide in something like shock, and Buffy felt the blood suffuse her face in a fierce blush. Then Dakota took a step toward Buffy, her mouth opening as though she were preparing to speak.

The next time either of them became consciously aware of what was going on, Buffy was naked on the kitchen counter with Dakota's hand between her legs and Dakota's fangs buried in her neck. The orgasm rocked the tiny blonde and she screamed Dakota's name as the surges of heat shot between the points at each end of her body. The Slayer cried out again a moment later as both fangs and fingers were slowly withdrawn, then she simply collapsed against the vampire in utter exhaustion. Dakota, coming back to herself, wrapped her arms around the smaller woman and held her tightly, staring out the kitchen window into the darkened back yard, wondering what on Earth they were going to say to Willow. Witch and Slayer had only been lovers for a little over a week—how would the sensitive redhead react?

Her answer came a moment later as soft lips grazed the nape of her neck and a warm, familiar set of hands slid under her shirt to caress her breasts. "My turn," Willow's sensual voice whispered from behind Dakota's ear. "I felt you two coming down the street an hour ago and you've been driving me crazy ever since. Now it's time to do something about it."

Dakota turned slightly to see Willow standing behind her, dressed only in a shimmery blue slip that Dakota had bought for her from Victoria's Secret on one of her walkabouts. The grin on Willow's face could not be described by any word other than erotic, and Dakota opened her embrace to pull the redhead in with herself and the Slayer. As she slid one hand under the slip to touch the secret places of Willow, places she had thought never to touch again, she dimly thought that their lives would never be the same again. And then she thought no more.

In the few weeks that followed, the three women found that they were easily able to build a relationship together. It was made a bit simpler, in Dakota's opinion, by the fact that they did not all live in the same house. She had, in fact, rejected the suggestion that she and Mercedes immediately move in at 1630. The kids would need time to adjust to the concept of the three "stable" adults in heir lives having apparently gone insane, as well as even to he concept that they were in a three-way relationship. Mercedes needed stability in her life, something that she could depend on, and her home was that major stability right now. She knew that she could walk in the door and everything would be a certain way. There was no reason to upheave her life like that.

There was also Dawn to think of. Dawn was notoriously picky about things, (Dakota hated to use the term spoiled brat, but it fit so aptly in Dawn's case), and she needed time to adjust to the relationship as well before a new parental figure and—in essence—a stepsister came crowding into her space.

Dakota also thought, very quietly in the back of her mind, that with the two girls living in separate houses, she could limit the amount of influence Dawn's attitudes and behavior had on Mercedes. In fact, all of the adults in close contact with Dawn—even Anya, who was disgracefully insensitive to subtleties in human behavior—had noticed that Mercedes had actually been somewhat of a grounding influence on Dawn. As Buffy's sister watched the relaxed way Mercedes interacted with the world around her, she realized that the little Southern girl had a lot less stress in her life than Dawn did, and tried to emulate her manner with some small success.

The other major reason that Dakota didn't want to move in with her lovers was that she had a craving for personal space that she didn't really feel would be available in a house with three adult women and two young teenage girls. Not that she didn't love Buffy and Willow both dearly, but Dakota was her own woman and she needed that alone time to keep her sanity. Since she'd become a vampire, she hadn't shared living quarters with anyone, and she wasn't entirely sure she was ready to start. Time enough for all of that later, when they could be sure that this was really a love thing rather than a lust thing.

But there was little time to think about that now, because the trio had made it to the master bedroom and Willow was naked under her hands and teeth, and there was no more time for abstract thought.

The loss of the potential Slayer who was to have been Buffy Summers's successor had been devastating to the Council under Quentin Travers's leadership, most especially due to the nature of her death. The journals of her Watcher, who had sought her for several months only to lose her when he was within half a mile of her, reflected first excitement at the prospect of finding her, and then despair upon the discovery of her death—for it had been he who found her corpse, battered from her first and final battle and empty of blood. She had been drained by more than one, he noted, as there were several sets of fang-marks on her body. He noted also that there was quite a bit of dust on the ground which appeared to be vampire dust, and he noted that she had put up a valiant struggle before losing. He had then hurried away from her body, not wanting to be associated with it when she was found dead.

In retrospect, it was that escape that both saved his life and set events predicted hundreds of years before into motion. For, with the sound of her Watcher's footsteps still echoing on the still street, the corpse's eyes opened and she sat up, looking around to see what was going on around her. The first thing she saw was her sire stepping out of the shadows. "It's about time you woke up," her sire spoke. "Come on. We don't have much time."

The failed Watcher returned to the Council with the terrible news of his Slayer's loss. He was consoled by several former Watchers who had lost Slayers, letting him know that he had done his best—which he had—and that these terrible things could happen to anyone. Only three months later, another potential, this one only eight years old, was discovered in western Kentucky at a boarding school and he was dispatched once again to remove the child from the school and bring her to London to train. He was more fortunate this time. The school that Janna Markham attended was not very high on security, being composed of extremely gifted children who actually wanted to be there, and it was a simple thing to slip onto the grounds in the dead of night, chloroform the girl and spirit her out of her dormitory. Once he had her in the car, he immediately took off for the airport and they were on a flight to London before she woke up and long before her absence from school was discovered.

On the transcontinental flight, the Watcher explained to his new charge what her sacred destiny was, and tried very, very hard to suppress the memory of that corpse, the brown-haired girl whom he should have been training.

Council business returned to normal, and over the next few years, while training and honing Janna into the Council's vision of the ultimate Slayer, the Watcher kept his eye on the progress of young Buffy Summers, whose Watcher, Rupert Giles, was actually a mate of his from preparatory school. He heard with anguish the news that Buffy had died, and spent a drunken night imagining the young brunette, his original Slayer, rising to take the mantle of her destiny. Instead, though, the Jamaican Slayer, Kendra, stepped in.

The Council was rocked by the news that Buffy Summers was still alive. Two Slayers? How could there be two Slayers? And yet there was. This extraordinary young girl, who had not even had a Watcher before being Called, continued to carry on the work of the Slayer, even as her Jamaican successor fought by her side. And then Kendra was dead, killed at the hands of the psychotic vampire Drusilla. Janna Markham's Watcher spent another drunken night at this news, seeing again that small body, ravaged and bitten, lying on the concrete sidewalk behind a stand of azaleas.

No one had quite known what to expect when Kendra was killed. Would the Slayer line fall back on the living Slayer, or would Kendra's successor be called? Neither happened, and the Council was rocked again by the discovery that the young woman they had thought to be Kendra's successor was, in fact, not. A third girl had been missed in the search for potentials. Another Watcher was dispatched to Boston to find Faith and begin her training. Then that Watcher was killed and Faith traveled to California, placing herself under the tutelage of Rupert Giles.

Janna was growing into a strong young woman. Now eleven years old, she was muscled and lean, and well-trained enough to begin facing captive vampires under controlled circumstances. She was brought into training groups with other young potentials in the United Kingdom and was undefeatable in her age range. She was touted as the next Buffy Summers. Until Buffy Summers survived her Cruciamentum only to refuse to work with the Council any longer. It seemed that this would be the Council's decade for paralyzing shocks. No Slayer had ever refused to work with the Council, in its millennial history. But Buffy did, and stuck with it, even to the point that the Watcher sent to relieve Rupert Giles sent weekly screams for help back to the Council. Janna's Watcher wasn't surprised. Wesley Wyndam-Price was a poncy little knob-polisher and not worthy of being sent to oversee either Slayer, and this was proved by the debacle that occurred when the second Slayer, Faith, went rogue. Shortly thereafter, he left the Council. Many felt that it was the smartest thing he could have done.

Janna was thirteen when Slayer and Council began working together again, though it was for only a short time and only due to the threat of the hellgod who called itself Glory. She had begun watching Buffy Summers as closely as her Watcher did, intrigued by the unorthodox methods which had kept this Slayer alive for so long. It was without a doubt that Buffy was the most effective Slayer the Council had ever seen, and Janna wanted to learn why, so that she could take what worked of the California Slayer's methods and incorporate them into her own personal style. She was incredibly mature for a thirteen-year-old, and an intellectual match for her Watcher. If it was possible, she knew more about demon lore than he did. He began that year slowly indoctrinating her to the machinations of the Council, thinking that perhaps, if she became to old for the Calling, she might become a Watcher.

She became intensely familiar with the inner workings of the Council and, under his tutelage, learned her way around its intrigues. It was she who put the first doubts in his mind about the fitness of Quentin Travers to maintain order in the Council. It was she who pointed out to her Watcher the senselessness of many of Travers's actions, and it was she who encouraged him to go secretly into the archives of the Council and find the truth when Rupert Giles called him late one night with his desperate question. She was now fourteen years old and looked twenty-three, and her Watcher had run out of new things to teach her. She was the best Slayer that she could possibly be, and now well on her way to learning the job of Watcher as well, and she was the one he brought his concerns to when he found out the awful truth about what Giles was harboring.

"You have to tell him," she told him that night. "You have to tell him what she is. He has to know."

But Janna didn't know what her Watcher knew. Janna didn't know that there was no need for her Watcher to go and research the name that Giles had called him with. She didn't know that the moment he heard the name, a cold sweat had broken out all over his body, though he had managed to keep his voice even while he promised to make enquiries as secretly as possible.

But there was no one else he could trust, so he sat her down on the night of her fifteenth birthday, nearly three months after Giles had called, and told her exactly why he was having such trouble explaining the situation to Rupert. He began with the Council discovering that two potentials had been missed in the search, and explained about the long search he had made for the girl he had been assigned to. He told her how he had tracked the girl and her family to southern California, and had been within ten minutes of finding her when she was attacked and killed by vampires.

He explained to Janna the crushing heartbreak he had undergone, and how hard it had been for him to take her on, although, he assured her, he was intensely glad that he had done so, for she was enough to make any Watcher proud enough to burst. And he explained how hard he had tried to suppress the memory of his failure with his first Slayer, and how he might have been able to save her life if he had been but one day sooner in finding her.

She listened to his story carefully, analyzing it and understanding the things he said to her, but coming up empty on one front. And so she asked him: "What has that to do with this vampire that Mr. Giles has called you about?"

He had looked up at her, bleakly, and his voice was hollow when he spoke. "Janna, the girl I was sent to retrieve... her name was Dakota Walsh."

Janna started, ugly shock crossing her pretty face when she recognized that name as being the name of the daywalking vampire that Giles had asked them to research. "No wonder you don't have to research it."

"No Slayer has ever been turned into a vampire before," he whispered quietly. "Never. And now I know why."

"Of course," she replied quietly. "Any Slayer who was turned, retaining her soul and being immune to daylight and your typical vampire banes would be an amazing and nearly unstoppable enemy of demonkind. They must have known this. But whoever sired this girl had no idea that she was a potential Slayer. What a colossal blunder!"

"The Council will try to capture her, if they find out about her," her Watcher told her. "They will want to study her and then kill her. They cannot allow her to live."

"Oh, yes, and of course the Council is infallible in all things," she responded sarcastically.

He smiled wanly at her. "You are correct. And of course I must inform Rupert. The girl needs to know to protect herself."

"I should say she hasn't much to worry about, really," the girl drawled, a hint of Kentucky still in her voice even after seven years in London. "Not with Buffy Summers on her side."

"If Buffy Summers gets in their way, they'll try to kill her, too." He sighed, then tilted his head. "Not that I think they'd have very much luck at it," he added contemplatively.

He nodded. "And I shall." He glanced at the clock. "It can, however, wait until a decent hour their time. I shouldn't like to wake him so early with news like this."

She left him then, going off to train, and he sat by his fire, sipping tea and thinking about the young girl who should have been his Slayer. He visualized her as she had been, lying dead on the sidewalk, and then he visualized her as an ensouled vampire. The mind boggled. Lost in his thoughts as he was, he did not hear the almost-silent footsteps behind him, and he only realized he wasn't alone when he felt the sting of a hypodermic needle enter the back of his neck.

There was a brief burning sensation as something was injected into him, and then his assailant stepped around in front of him. It was Quentin Travers. He sighed down at the Watcher, whose sight was already beginning to dim under the onslaught of the fast-acting poison he had been injected with. "I'm sorry, old friend," Travers said quietly. "But I can't let the information you have become public to the rest of the Council. It's too dangerous. Don't worry about Janna... I'll assign her a new Watcher who doesn't know quite so many dangerous people as you. Goodbye."

Janna kept her silence about what she knew when she discovered that her Watcher was dead. The official story was that he had a heart attack, but she knew better, and she waited for her opportunity. It came some two weeks after being assigned to her new Watcher, a woman who was relatively thick-headed and so easily manipulated by her intelligent young charge. Janna gave her a story about wishing to attend a play in northern London and received permission to go. A Council worker went with her as a chaperone, and she waited until Intermission, when he went into the restroom, to make her break. And break she did.

The instant the bathroom door closed behind him, Janna sauntered out the door as though merely taking a quick breather. Then she slipped into an alley, shed her fancy theater shoes, pulled her sneakers and her wallet out of her handbag, and discarded the bag as well. A quick tug on the neck of her blouse and it was off, revealing a tee-shirt, and then a shimmy out of her ankle-length skirt left her in blue jogging pants with snaps up the sides. Leaving the alley at the other end, Janna blended into the crowd outside a pub, looking like any other teenager in the world.

She knew that her first job was going to be tough just getting out of England, but she wasn't too worried. Under the guidance of her late Watcher, she had formed a number of alliances in London's more benign demon underworld and she was able to trade on some of those alliances to smuggle her out of England and into France, and from there into the cargo hold of a plane bound for Raleigh, North Carolina. From slipping her watchdog at the play to settling into the plane took her seven hours, and she was absolutely terrified that she'd be caught, but then the airplane took off and she breathed a sigh of relief.

She settled back into the blankets provided to her by Linda, the shapeshifting demon who worked for the airline and had smuggled her onto the airplane, and closed her eyes, knowing that she was going to need all the sleep she could get.

Back at the Council house, her guard dog was being screamed at by a large man with a purple face. "What do you mean she left the play? Why weren't you with her?"

"Mr. Travers, I was only in the loo for a few minutes, and when I came out, she was gone. I didn't think she could have gone far, but I found her clothes and shoes in the alley. She must have planned it."

"Of course she planned it, you imbecile! Obviously she knows about this situation we have. You get out there and you find her! She can't possibly get out of England—she hasn't got any kind of papers. You find her! I don't care what has to be done. Do you hear me? Find her! And bring her back here alive!"

And so it was Janna's pure luck that, as she crossed the Atlantic heading for North Carolina, the Council's search for her was spreading outside of London and into the countryside. They would not give up seeking her for over a week, during which time Travers would be terrified to make any kind of move without knowing what the loose cannon he considered Janna to be was capped. She had more of a head start than she knew, but it would turn out to be just what she needed. She had only one thought in her mind. Beyond that, who knew? But she dedicated herself to one task and one task only: get to California, find the Slayer, and warn her.

We went to the Bronze last night as a trio for the first time. Dakota had the idea to show up in nearly identical outfits, and we went shopping for them together yesterday afternoon. We ended up in black jeans and black Doc Marten boots—her present to us—and skintight midriff shirts in different colors. I got green, to match my eyes. Willow chose blue, because it looks so good with her hair and gives her eyes a distinctly bluish look. Dakota, no surprise, chose black. When I saw her in her outfit for the first time, I told her she looked dangerous, and I meant it.

Then I decided to play on that. I convinced her to wear makeup, just for the night, and when she consented, I did her eyes in slate grey and her lipstick in the deepest blackberry I could find. When I was done, she looked almost like Faith. Willow allowed me to make her up as well, and I did her eyes in blue to bring out the color in her irises, and her lips in cotton-candy pink. For me, I wore earth tones because I didn't want to steal the others' thunder. But when we stood together in front of the huge mirror in the master bath at Dakota's house, I realized that we were all three stunning. All three of us had grown our hair long and were wearing it tied back in ponytails with wisps at the temples, and if it hadn't been for the differences in coloring and height, we could have been triplets. It was definitely going to be an interesting night.

Every eye was on us when we walked into the club that night. As a last minute touch, Dakota had unearthed a navel ring that had a blinking blue-and-red light in it, which turned even more heads our direction. We strolled up to the table the rest of the Scoobs had appropriated, and I watched with some amusement as Xander's jaw dropped to about the level of his knees. Anya turned to see what he was staring at, saw us, and smirked. She made what was probably an inappropriate sexual comment, judging by the expression that crossed Giles's face, and I was glad we weren't close enough to hear her. Spike, whom Willow had invited rather against my better judgment, was drooling all over himself in typical Spikely fashion. And Tara, our newest little head case, just kind of smiled to herself.

Tara was an interesting situation, and I was actually kind of glad she had joined the Scoobies. She and Willow had bonded over a campus Wicca group in which they were the only two people who knew anything about real magic, and she had begun hanging out with the three of us and, by extension, the other Scoobs, socially. Then, late one night shortly before her twentieth birthday, she had come to the three of us for help. I remembered it clearly and, looking at her little grin as we approached the table, I was glad we'd been there to help her.

"You h-h-have to help me. P-P- Please. I'm in t-trouble." Those words were just about the only ones guaranteed to grant the speaker entrance into the house at 1630 Revello Drive. Dakota stepped back and let a frantic Tara in the house, closing and locking the door behind her with a nervous glance into the street.

"What's going on, Tara?" she asked, leading the frightened girl into the living room where, a moment before, we had been watching a Monty Python movie. Willow, seeing the state Tara was in, went into the kitchen to put some tea on.

Tara alternated her gaze between Dakota and Buffy. "I kn- know you know about d-d-demons and things. I, um, I t-talked to a girl who s-said you s-saved her f-from a v-v-vampire." She paused uncertainly. Dakota nodded at her encouragingly, and she continued. "I... a-a-all the women in my f-family are part d-demon. M-m-my f-father is h-here f-f-for my b-birthday a-and h-he w-w-wants to m-make m-me come h-home s-so h-he can k-k-keep m-me... I-I mean it—under c-control. B-But I d-don't want to go. S-So I w-wanted to see if you kn-knew a w-w-way t-t-to bind a d-d-demon."

Dakota leaned forward, fascinated. "What kind of demon?" she asked. When she only got a confused look from Tara, she elaborated. "There are many different species of demons in the world. We need to know what kind of demon in order to find the correct binding spell. All spells don't work on all demons."

Dakota nodded. "There's a way I can find out. If I look in your eyes, I can tell anything I want to know about you. But it's a big invasion of your privacy, because I can't control what I do and don't see. If you'll let me, I can try -"

"Y-Y-Yes, p-please! I d-d-don't c-care." Tara looked eagerly at Dakota. "P-Please."

Dakota knelt in front of the young witch and looked directly into her eyes. She froze as she was drawn into Tara's mind, and didn't notice when Willow came back with the cup of tea. Buffy began to worry when the two women stayed locked in rapport, neither moving, and put her hand between their faces to break the eye contact. When she did, both of them fell backwards with identical explosions of breath.

"Oh, my God, Tara," Dakota exclaimed when she could speak. "You're amazing. I never met anyone as powerful as you before." Tara tried to shyly demur, but Dakota would have none of it. "I'm serious. You're going to be an amazing witch one day."

"Did you find out what kind of demon she is?" Buffy asked, bringing them back to the topic.

"Oh, yeah," the brunette responded. "She's not." The others gaped at her until she glared. "What? Why are you looking at me like that? The girl's not a demon. She's been lied to."

"B-B-But, they said, the m-m-magic, it c-comes from the d-d-demon..." Tara's voice trailed off in confusion.

"Well, there's one other way I can check to be absolutely certain," Dakota stated flatly.

Dakota sighed, pulled Tara close as though preparing to look in her eyes again, then gamefaced and sank her fangs into the young witch's neck. Almost before Tara had a chance to scream, Dakota had released her and de-vamped, shaking her head in disgust. "Girl, I don't know what your family's problem is, but you've been lied to. Big time. You're no more demon than Willow is."

Dakota nodded grimly. "I know human blood, and I know demon blood. And you're no demon."

Tara slept on the couch in the living room that night, and faced her family the next morning with a Slayer and a vampire standing behind her, ready and more than willing to bodily prove to the Maclays that their young witch wasn't going anywhere she didn't want to go. Since that time, Tara had been a full-fledged member of the Scooby Gang, and had blossomed in the warmth of their friendship.

I saw again in my memory the scared little girl who had come to my house begging for help, and I contrasted her with the self-confident young woman who met us at the Bronze with some satisfaction. Tara was an awesome person and I was glad she was with us. She had also proved very valuable with the magic thing, actually knowing more about it than Willow and being able to tutor and, to some extent, temper Willow. Dakota and I had gotten a little concerned about Willow's thirst for magical power, but Tara seemed to be able to exert a sort of controlling influence on her for which we were both grateful.

She continued to smile that little half-grin as we strolled up to the table, hand in hand. Everyone stared at us, but Giles was the first to speak. He didn't even bother to clean his glasses. "I suppose this is your elaborate way of demonstrating to us that you're... er... all together?"

He smiled tiredly. "Has anything I've ever not been 'cool' with ever stopped anyone at this table from doing anything that they wanted to do?"

I just laughed. "We're going to go dance," I announced to everyone and no one, and dragged my girlfriends out on the floor to make all the boys jealous.

Janna came awake with a start when her ears popped as the plane began its descent into Raleigh-Dalton Airport. She positioned herself next to the cargo hold door, slung the backpack over her shoulder that one of her contacts had filled with supplies for her, and waited for the plane to slow as it taxied toward the terminal, pulling it open slightly and trying to gauge when she could jump out with the least amount of damage to herself. She gauged wrong and leapt a bit too soon, tucking and rolling and coming up with some pretty serious scrapes on her arms and the left side of her face. She looked around for a moment, steadying herself and catching her bearings, then set off for the nearest fence, vaulting over it just as the tinny sounds of shouts from the terminal reached her ears, letting her know she'd been spotted.

She dashed across the access road which lay beyond the fence and into a stand of trees that proved fortunately deep enough to provide some cover. There, she dropped to the ground and breathed a sigh of relief, calming and centering herself and trying to decide on the best course of action to take from here.

She had no contacts on this side of the Atlantic, which was going to make her job a lot tougher. If she'd known even one demon, witch or even an ordinary human who knew something about the mystical world, she'd have been in a lot better shape, and she knew it. There just hadn't been time to get a letter of introduction from any of the shady types who had sped her out of England to the Continent, and thence into the plane to America. She thought briefly about her options. Who might she contact and be certain of help?

A thought dawned in the back of her mind. Her family. She hadn't seen her family in over eight years, since she had left their home to attend the boarding school that her Watcher had abducted her from, and hadn't really even thought about them in something like five years. Her parents, four brothers and two sisters, grandmothers and grandfathers, aunts and uncles; all of these she had in south Georgia. And they were obscenely wealthy. They could easily transport her to California and help her find the Slayer. She was standing up and wondering which would be the best direction to go in to look for a telephone when she had a brief flash of the conversation that might ensue once she had one of her family members on the telephone. She became so amused and disgusted with herself that she spoke aloud. "Oh, that's intelligent, Markham. 'Hi, Mom, it's Janna. I know you haven't heard from me in upwards of eight years, and I do apologize for that. You see, I've been in London training for the eventuality when I'll become the Slayer. What? Oh, a Slayer is a girl who fights and kills vampires and demons, to keep the world safe for humanity. Yes, yes, I want to see you, too, but there's a murder conspiracy afoot in the Council right now, and I've got to get to California and warn the current Slayer that the Council is going to come and try to kill her friend Dakota, who is a vampire immune from sunlight due to the fact that she should have been a Slayer, but was killed and turned before she had the opportunity to be called. Any chance you could spring for an airline ticket?'" She snorted at herself. "You moron."

No, the family reunion would have to wait until after she had gotten to the Slayer. So, she wondered to herself, how does a nearly-penniless young person travel three thousand miles across the North American continent?

"Thanks so much for the ride!" Janna exclaimed, climbing into the cab of the Freightliner that stopped to pick her up. She flashed the her most charming smile at the grizzled driver, a man who looked to be about sixty years old, and pushed all the Oxford out of her voice to speak in the informal Cockney that she'd learned in the underbelly of London. "Grand of you, really."

"Ain't no problem, little miss," the driver returned, smiling back at her. "Where ya headed?"

"California," she replied. "Me sister's there, in Sunnydale, said I could come to 'er." She eyeballed the dashboard clock discreetly, reading the time as seventeen minutes after noon. She pulled off her watch, which was still set to London time, and reset it to match the truck driver's clock.

He put the big truck in gear and pulled off the shoulder, back onto the westbound side of the interstate. "Well, I cain't take ya that fur," he drawled, "but I kin git ya to Memphis by 'bout this time tamorra if'n ya stick with me. Or I kin git ya there faster if'n ya trust me ta send ya on with another driver."

She nodded. "I'd rather be there faster, if ye don't mind," she said slowly. "She's 'avin a baby, ye see, an' I wanna be there for 'er."

"Well, then, little miss, I'll be gettin' ya inta another truck 'fore too long. Meetin' up with a feller I'm acquent with in Knoxville an' I reckon he'll be all right fer ye ta ride with."

"Lovely," she replied, smiling. "Me name's Emily Beecham." She offered her hand to shake.

He took her hand in one of his huge paws and shook it. "Earl Miller," he told her. "Pleased ta meetcha, Miz Beecham."

He laughed uproariously, though it wasn't all that funny, and tuned the radio to a Hank Williams song as they rolled along towards Charlotte.

Just after 2:30 that afternoon, Earl pulled into a truck stop just outside of Charlotte, and shook Janna gently by the shoulder to wake her. She came awake with a start into full battle mode, and he jumped back in surprise. "Calm down, Emily," he said, and she relaxed.

He chuckled. "Don't blame ya a bit, Em," he told her, patting her shoulder. "I reckon I'd be tense too, in yer situation. Now, listen up, young'un." He reached behind his seat and pulled out a worn flannel jacket, which he handed to her. "You take thisyere coat, an' you wear it iffen ya git cold. Yer likely to, up in the mountains as yer goin'. I'm bout to put ya in the truck with m'brother, Jack, an' ya kin trust him ta keep ya safe. He'll find ya another ride in Nashville, I reckon."

"You'll take it, cuz you'll need it," he said firmly. "An' don't try to change m'mind. I got youngins older'n you back home, so I know how to deal with hardheaded kids. You git to yer sister's house, you kin send it back to me. M'name 'n address is on a paper in the inside pocket. Now, here comes Jack in that green truck over there. He knows you're a-comin', but I got to git on into town. So you be careful. Ya hear?"

He studied her face for a moment. "No, I don't guess I do hafta worry, but I'll do it anyway on account of ya look just like m'sister's daughter what got snatched some years back. So you just let Earl know when ya git safe to yer sister's, hear?"

She nodded. "I promise." She grabbed the jacket and her carrysack and climbed down out of his truck. "Thanks, Earl!" She slammed the door shut and ran across the parking lot to the green truck which was idling nearby, its driver waiting for her. She climbed up the side of the truck, gave Earl an enthusiastic wave, and climbed into the truck with a slightly younger version of Earl. "'Ello, Jack," she greeted him as she swung into the seat. "Thank ye for picking me up."

"Ain't nothin' to it, Emily," he responded. "Always glad ta he'p m'brother out. And he warn't lyin', neither. You do look just like our sister's daughter. Ain't that just a kicker. So you're from England, eh?" He put the truck in gear as he spoke, rolling out past Earl's with a wave, and climbed onto the Interstate heading west through Charlotte and towards the Tennessee line.

Se took an active interest in the conversation and the lovely scenery after her nap in Earl's truck, and chatted amiably with him about her fictitious life in London and her sister in California. He in turn shared stories with her about his four children and Earl's six. The miles melted away beneath their tires as they rolled on, and before Janna even realized it, they had gone four hours and were rolling through Knoxville. Jack got on his CB and got in touch with a buddy who was rolling into Knoxville from the north and heading west, and was willing to carry Janna through to Memphis. Janna was deeply appreciative, as she felt that she could trust this man and his friends.

When they pulled into the truck stop on the west side of Knoxville, Jack's buddy was already waiting in a bright orange truck with no trailer. They met him halfway across the parking lot. "'Ere she is, Dick, Miss Emily Beecham, of the gre't city a' London, England," Earl introduced her with a grin. "Emily, thisyere's m'buddy Dick Hallorann, from south Alabama, an' one'a the finest bass fishermen ya could ever hope to meet."

She extended a hand to the burly black man and it was engulfed in his own return shake. "Pleased to meet you," he greeted her in what she thought was a surprisingly cultured voice for someone from south Alabama.

Dick and Jack shook hands. "We'd better git," Dick said. "Gotta be in Memphis before midnight if I don't wanna deadhead all the way to Mobile."

"All right," Jack said, and turned to Emily. "Now, girl, lemme tell you somethin'. My brother bought yer story 'bout yer sister, but I know a runaway when I see one. I guess you do got somewhere you're runnin' to, since yer in sech a hurry, but you do something for Jack Miller while you're about findin' yer way. You keep an eye out and an ear to the ground fer any word you might hear of a girl looks jest like you do, a'ight? An' if you find her, you tell her she's missed an' we want her to come home."

Janna nodded. "I shall," she said firmly, dropping the Cockney and using her own accent, the one she'd developed after eight years of spending eighteen hours a day with her Oxford-educated Watcher. "I do have a sister," she added, thinking that perhaps there was really no better way to describe the kinship between Slayers, "but she hasn't any idea that I'm coming, and she shan't like the word I bring her when I get there. But she has to know and she has to know soon."

The three of them parted, but suddenly Janna turned and shouted after him. "Jack!" When he turned, just before closing the door of his cab, she called out, "What name shall I ask for, when I search for your niece?"

She watched him drive away, rooted to the spot in shock. Dick had to call her alias twice before he broke through her frozen brain enough to get her to scramble up into the truck and buckle in for the ride to Memphis.

Quentin Travers was near the end of his tolerance. With Janna Markham gone rogue, and no one able to tell him what, if anything, she might know of the current Slayer and her ridiculously named "Scooby Gang," he was petrified to make any sort of move lest he cause the apocalypse foretold in the Prophecy of Destruction. The daywalking vampire had to be neutralized. That was all he was truly concerned about.

One of his operatives entered his office and stood quietly, waiting to be acknowledged. Travers turned his full attention to the man. "What can you tell me?"

The operative shook his head gravely. "Not much, sir. The girl seems to have disappeared completely. I've had people check every hotel and hostelry between here and Scotland and she's nowhere to be found. Sir, we need to consider the possibility that she's got across to the Continent somehow."

"Sir, swimming the Channel's not such a proposition for a girl as well-trained physically as Janna was, sir. He did take care to make certain she was physically fit."

The operative shrugged. "No idea, sir. Could have gone anywhere. She could be in Switzerland by now, sir. It's been three days."

"Three days. Three days in which she could easily have gotten in touch with the Slayer or someone in her camp. Three days in which she has slipped out of our grasp and control. Three days." Quentin Travers' face was slowly growing dark red. "Three days in which the incompetence of my operatives has been eclipsed only by the extreme danger that, before this is all over, there will be no Council at all!"

The operative desperately tried to find a bit of information that would appease Travers. "We've sent agents to watch the family's home, sir."

"Yes, sir. On the off chance that she should make her way to America somehow, we believe her family would be the first people she would contact. We're watching them in the hopes of apprehending and neutralizing her before she has an opportunity to communicate with the Slayer."

Travers nodded. "Neutralize her. I agree. Whatever the cost. She's extremely well-trained and would make a fine Slayer, but she's proven rogue. She's to be treated as hostile. Your orders are to apprehend her if possible. If not, eliminate her."

The same day that the trio came out to their friends at the Bronze, Dawn and Mercedes went on a weekend trip to L. A. with a friend's family, leaving the adults with the house to themselves for three days without needing to worry about noise or privacy or giggles outside the bedroom door. Heaven.

Willow woke up before 'her girls' and slipped downstairs in her robe to make breakfast. A huge stack of pancakes, a pile of sausage patties and a steaming pot of coffee later, she loaded down a tray and headed back upstairs posthaste. Buffy was just stirring when the witch pushed the door open, and Dakota was pulling a pillow over her face to block out the sun. Willow grinned. "Wakey, wakey," she teased them cheerfully.

Buffy moaned something incoherent, rolling over onto her side, and Dakota removed one hand from under the covers for long enough to make a universally-recognized obscene gesture. Willow, unperturbed, set the tray down on the dresser and took the lid off the coffee thermos, allowing the delicious aroma to fill the room.

From under her pillow, Dakota mumbled something unrepeatable about Colombian coffee farmers and their nocturnal activities with wild herds of llama, which elicited a snort of laughter from Buffy and which Willow chose to ignore. "Come on, girls, I've got pancakes and sausage."

Dakota said something else under her pillow which both amused and disgusted Buffy, who burst out with mingled laughter and cries of "Ew, ew, ew!"

Willow crawled onto the bed, straddling Dakota's pelvis and pushing the pillow away. "What was that, love?"

Grinning from ear to ear, Dakota repeated, "I said I'd rather have a little Chinese."

Immediately catching the triple entendre, Willow fell off Dakota into the center of the bed and giggled helplessly. Buffy turned toward her and caught a tantalizing glimpse of bare flesh through the gap of her robe and, reaching over, grabbed the belt and pulled the robe open to reveal a very naked witch. "Woot! Look what I found!" she exclaimed, feigning surprise. With a wicked grin, she ran a hand lightly down Willow's torso and across her stomach, watching the redhead's abdominal muscles jump at the touch.

Dakota slid over next to Willow's warmth and began teasing one nipple. She glanced at Buffy as Willow's breath went ragged and murmured, "I think we ought to thank Willow for making such a nice breakfast, Buffy; what do you think?"

Buffy growled deep in her throat, grinning. "I think that sounds like a yummy idea," she agreed, leaning down in tandem with Dakota to take Willow's other breast in her mouth.

Willow gasped at the sudden moist heat as two mouths descended upon her breasts. "Oh, God," she moaned as two mouths suckled her and two hands caressed her torso and abdomen. She felt Buffy's hand—at least, she thought it was Buffy's hand—slide between her thighs and gently pull her legs apart, making way for Dakota to scrape her nails down Willow's belly, through her cinnamon thatch, and slide one finger between her slick folds to slowly caress the hardened nub she found there.

Willow let out a gasp, then a moan as fire shot from her center outward to the extremities of her body. The stimuli to her breasts had not slowed; in fact, it seemed to become more intense as Buffy's hand trailed back up her thigh to join Dakota's. Willow's moan became a high-pitched keen as with agonizing slowness, two of Buffy's fingers slid into her moist heat. The redhead's hands clenched at the sheet beneath her, grabbing handfuls of fabric as her body strained at the incredibly slow motions of the hands and mouths upon her. Her breath was coming in heaving gasps, each one punctuated by a wordless cry. Sweat was pouring off her body when she finally began to beg. "Please—please—oh, God—Buffy—Dakota—please -"

Dakota and Buffy made eye contact and grinned at one another, then as one they began to increase both tempo and pressure. Buffy curved her fingers to stimulate the inside of Willow's channel, while Dakota alternated rapid strokes with pinches and scrapes of her fingernail. As Willow's body began to buck beneath them, Buffy thrust in more deeply and Dakota stroked fiercely until they felt her form go rigid. She gasped twice and hung on the edge for an agonizing eternity; then Buffy hooked her fingers again, thrusting once more with a sudden twist of her wrist and, with a full-throated cry, Willow thundered over the edge and into the blissful abyss of oblivion beyond.

In Memphis Janna and Dick parted ways. He offered to find her another ride, but she decided that she'd been trackable for long enough. She shook her head and told him that she was grateful, but that her sister had a friend in Germantown that she could stay with for a few days. He left her in a truck stop in Bartlett, warning her to be very careful who she took rides with, and repeating the Miller brothers' request that she keep in touch. She promised that she would and went inside toward the pay telephone.

Standing in line at the phone, Janna watched as Dick fired his rig up and rolled out of the parking lot, at which point she stepped out of line and went into the bathroom. There she took out the buck knife she'd found in an inside pocket of Earl's coat and hacked her hair off into a rough chin-length bob, flushing the long strands away down the toilet wrapped in tissue. She examined herself carefully in the mirror and decided to hack in some bangs as well, altering her hairstyle as much as she could in the short time she had. Then she pulled a small wooden box out of her bag and opened it.

This box had been given to her by Linda, the shapeshifter from British Airways, and contained some small spells that she could use to disguise her appearance. They were all wrapped in small linen bags and labeled neatly. She chose one labeled "facial scar," opened it and recited the short cantrip in demon-speak that Linda had given her, and felt a swift burning sensation take the right side of her face. When it had dissipated, she looked in the mirror to discover that she now had an impressive knife scar which began just above her right eye and trailed down her right cheek. She grinned. "Cool."

She repacked her belongings swiftly and left the truck stop, heading back toward the Interstate. She climbed the fence separating the truck stop lot from the westbound shoulder and began to walk at a brisk pace, knowing that sooner or later someone would stop and pick her up.

It turned out to be sooner rather than later. She had only walked about two miles when a Ford Crown Victoria pulled over just in front of her. It was driven by an old man whose even older wife sat in the passenger seat. Janna pulled the back door open and climbed in. "Oh, thanks!" she exclaimed, pulling the door shut behind her and settling her bag on the seat next to her. "Man, I really appreciate it." She spoke quickly and sloppily, trying to catch the Southern twang that Earl and Jack Miller had used.

"You're very welcome, young lady," the woman spoke, as her husband focused on getting back into traffic. They slid into the left hand lane and picked up speed rapidly until they were cruising along at seventy miles per hour. "Where are you going?"

"My sister Emily's. She lives in California." She smiled winningly. "I'm Casey Logan, by the way."

"Casey, I am Victoria Boudreaux and this is Alexandre, my husband of fifty-six years."

"Wow, fifty-six years! That's a long time." She rubbed at the scar on her face, which itched a bit. "So, yeah, thanks for pickin' me up."

"Quite," Victoria intoned. She was awfully formal and, after having actually spent time in close quarters with British nobility, Janna found her rather amusing. "So, my dear, you are in luck, because Alexandre and I are traveling very nearly all the way to California. You are welcome to spend the trip with us under certain conditions."

Victoria nodded. "You are an astute young woman, I can tell. Therefore you perhaps will have noted from the richness of our vehicle that Alexandre and I are rather wealthy. You would not be wrong. We also have a high position to maintain and could not in any case be suspected of harboring an obvious runaway."

"Oh, you don't have to worry about that, Mrs. Boudreaux. Ain't nobody lookin' for me. My mama's dead."

"Pa? Shoot, if Pa kin git outta the gin long enough to even notice I ain't there it'll be a surefire miracle. He'll be dead 'fore the snows come. And m'brother's in prison."

Victoria raised one eyebrow. Janna shrugged. "I was ten. He was drunk and didn't know what he was doin'; but they tuck him off anyway."

Victoria nodded, satisfied with the story, though probably seeing it for the lie that it was. "And your sister?"

Janna shook her head. "Naw. No way to let her know I was comin'. Got no phone to home, an' no long distance even did we have one."

As Victoria willed it, Janna learned that night, so it would be. Victoria would hear nothing but that Janna should have a room to herself in the hotel in downtown Little Rock, insisting when Janna protested about the expense that they could well afford it and needed a grandchild to spoil. Alexandre, who, it turned out, spoke very little English, told her in a confusing mix of Creole French and broken English that she was to make free with the telephone for as long as she needed to call her sister and let her know what the situation was, but that she was to be at their room in precisely one and one half hours for dinner. And she was to have a shower and put on clean clothing before she came.

Janna stood and stared at the door for a long moment after Alexandre had left, simply stunned. Then she turned and stared at her ragged reflection in the mirror. "Somebody upstairs likes you, little girl," she told herself. "You just got as lucky as I think you're gonna ever get in your life." Then she made short shrift of the required shower, and went to sit on the side of the king size bed and stare at the telephone.

"Who should I call?" she wondered aloud. She could call Rupert Giles, the Watcher who had made the enquiry into the dead Slayer; or she could call directly to the Slayer herself, Buffy Summers. The thought of speaking to Buffy Summers sent a huge thrill through her body, and she began to feel as giddy as a teenybopper when presented with the opportunity to speak directly to the latest teen idol. Perhaps it would be the wiser course to call the Watcher, but she couldn't help it: she wanted to talk to the Slayer. She lifted the receiver, got an outside line, and called directory assistance in Sunnydale, California. She asked for both numbers just in case she should not be able to reach anyone at Buffy's home; rather than fool around waiting for the Slayer to come home and possibly endangering lives in the process, she would call Rupert Giles.

She sat for a long moment staring at the two telephone numbers scribbled on the hotel pad. Buffy Summers, Rupert Giles. She forced herself to breathe deeply and remain calm, thinking carefully through all the information she had that she needed to pass on. Then she picked up the receiver, got an outside line, and dialed the number with a shaking finger.

One ring, then two, then three, and an answering machine picked up. "You've reached Buffy, Dawn and Willow. We're all doing something incredibly exciting right now, which is why we aren't answering the phone. Please leave your-" and the recording was suddenly overlaid by a breathless human voice. "Hold on, hold on, I'm here. Don't hang up. Let me turn this stupid thing off." There was a thud, and a curse, and a sound of feedback, and then a click as the machine was successfully deactivated. The voice came back. "Sorry about that," it said cheerfully. "Summers' residence, can I help you?"

"Hello," she said softly in her own accent. "Might I please speak with Buffy Summers?"

"Not here," the voice responded laconically. "Took Dawn to the mall. Take a message?"

"Er..." she thought fast. She knew that the witch Willow lived with Buffy and was aware of her status as the Slayer, and if this were Willow, she could easily share the information she had with the witch. "Are you by any chance Willow?"

"Nope again," the voice came back. "Before you strike out, this is Dakota. Who'm I speaking to?"

"Miss Walsh, you don't know me, but my name is Janna Markham and I have some information that you need to know about."

"Call me Dakota. Who are you, Janna with an English accent, and how did you come by this information?"

The voice when it came back now was deadly serious. "Are you with the Watchers' Council?"

"No. Not any more. I'm... I'm going to be a Slayer some day. If they don't kill me first. Mr. Giles called my Watcher and asked him about you, Dakota, and he knew about you. He told me. I know what you are and I know why you are like you are. But the Council killed my Watcher and if they catch me, they'll kill me, too."

"Never mind about that. Tell me when you're here and safe. I can be in Little Rock late tomorrow or early the next day, I think. Are you safe?"

"Yes. You don't need to come to Little Rock. I'm traveling with some people and they can get me farther along. We're going to stop in Fort Worth, Texas, tomorrow night. Can you meet me there?"

"Yes," Dakota replied. "Write this number down." She rattled off a ten-digit number. "That's my cell. You call that number the first chance you get once you're in Fort Worth, and I'll come wherever you are and get you."

"All right, I will." She paused. "Dakota? Please be careful. The Council wants you dead."

Dakota snorted. "For more reasons than one, I'll wager. No fear, Janna. But you watch your back, hear?"

"I will," Janna said. "Um... I'm traveling as Casey Logan. Just in case the people I'm riding with are around when you pick me up. I said I was going to my sister Emily's."

"No, I don't think so. You should be my sister's friend, I think, because that way it'll explain it when we have to ask each other 'are you so-and-so.'"

"Good thinking, kid," Dakota agreed. "All right. I will—hang on." Dakota's voice got farther away somehow and Janna heard her talking to someone else. "It's a girl named Janna Markham. She's a Slayer-to-be. Says she's got some good info out of the Watcher's Council but they're after her."

Another voice, which was slightly muffled, came back through the phone. "Not surprising." There was a rustling sound, and then another voice came on the line, this one higher than Dakota's. "Janna?"

Janna's head reeled. She blinked away the sudden vertigo and stammered slightly. "H-H-Hello."

Janna swallowed twice. "I'm in a Hilton hotel in Little Rock, Arkansas. I'm with two old people from Louisiana who picked me up when I was hitchhiking out of Memphis. They're going to take me with them to Fort Worth tomorrow."

"Y-yes," she stuttered, then she gasped and began to cry. "He's dead, he's dead and they killed him." Buffy spent a few minutes using her calmest voice with Janna, eventually quieting her tears and convincing her to straighten up. "I'm okay," Janna finally said.

"Good. Now, you said you're supposed to go eat with these people. Straighten up, go eat with them. Tell them whatever you feel like you have to tell them. Keep safe. Don't go anywhere alone. The Council won't risk making a scene anywhere and exposing themselves. Once you're in your room, bolt the door and don't open it for anyone. Just pretend you're asleep or in the tub or something. Okay?"

"Okay. I can do that. I can defend myself some. I don't have Slayer strength, but I do have a black belt in jujitsu."

"Good. Dakota will meet you in Fort Worth tomorrow night and then you'll come straight back here. We'll work up a plan of attack with Giles and the others then. You'll be safe here with us."

"Don't thank me. Thank yourself. You've risked yourself to make sure that we're safe. We owe you big time for that. Now go eat, get some rest, and we'll see you tomorrow." They disconnected and Janna washed her face, then presented herself at the Boudreaux's door for supper.

Buffy hung the phone up and turned to Dakota and Willow. "This means trouble. I'm calling Giles."

It was a break through the demon underworld that told Quentin Travers that he was in deep, deep trouble. A Morag demon in its cups in an east London pub mentioned having seen a girl matching Janna's description on the night she disappeared from the play. It made the mistake of mentioning this to the casually-dressed bloke who sat at the bar next to it and then proceeded to buy it a pint. The pint came laced and the next time the Morag woke, it was chained to the floor in one of the dungeons below the manor house belonging to the Council. Before him stood Quentin Travers.

"I suggest," said Travers quietly, contemplating the glowing fireplace poker he held before him with an oven mitt, "that you rapidly go about telling me everything you know about the girl you saw, and anyone who might have helped her."

Morag demons are not famous for their tolerance of pain and, before ten minutes had passed, Travers had all the information he needed. He coldly studied the weeping Morag for a moment, then thrust the poker into its chest. Then he returned to the ground floor and began making preparations to cross the Atlantic.

Within four hours, Travers and several of his operatives were on a jet. He didn't know how far behind the rogue girl they were, but he had to get there as fast as possible and attempt to neutralize the child. Had he known that even as his plane left Heathrow, Janna was dialing the number that would put her in touch with Dakota for the first time, he might have handled things differently. But he did not know, and so trusted in the gut feeling that told him he would still have the element of surprise.

Prophecies, as he told himself before drifting off to sleep, are mutable and changeable. They can be prevented. Even the Slayer herself, young Buffy Summers, had cheated a prophecy. The Slayer Codex had foretold her death upon facing the Master; yet she had lived and continued to live, despite Travers's own desperate wishes for her death.

It was unfortunate, in retrospect, that he did not realize that the Codex prophecy had indeed been fulfilled. The prophecy had stated that the Slayer would die upon facing the Master. It had said nothing at all about the Slayer staying dead.

The Scooby Gang, minus Dakota and Willow, gathered at Giles's apartment for a quick debriefing. "We need to be prepared, all of us," Buffy told them. "The Council is coming and, according to this girl, they're looking to kill. She's terrified—I could hear it in her voice. God only knows how long she's been on the run."

Giles put his head in his hands. "For quite some time, I believe," he said. "I called her Watcher to request information about Dakota several months ago. I never heard back from him, but I hadn't expected an immediate response. The research he was doing was clandestine, or supposed to be, and I anticipated it taking him some time. You see, I recalled an incident that occurred nearly the same time you were called, Buffy. A potential Slayer was killed by vampires before she could be contacted by her Watcher. This was the girl who would have followed you, Buffy; but because of her death, Kendra followed you instead. Everyone knew who it was and which Watcher it was, but when I called to ask him about it, I pretended that I didn't remember that it was him."

Buffy puzzled this out and repeated, "So, Janna's Watcher was the same dude who was supposed to have Watchered the dead chick?"

"Rather a lot, it would seem," Giles responded. "The dead girl's name was Dakota Walsh."

The silence in the apartment was sudden and deafening. Finally, Buffy was able to stammer out, "Wh-wh-what?"

Giles nodded, cleaning his glasses. "Yes. The reason she's immune to everything a vampire should fear is that she carries the magickal blood of the Slayer. She makes such a good slaying companion because it's what she's meant to be doing. The reason why she still has a soul is because of this as well."

He smiled slightly. "Think about it, Buff. When that kid was having the nightmares, the one whose Kiddie League coach beat him, remember? And we were all experiencing our nightmares."

"Right," Xander replied. "But you were still you. You weren't all evil and stuff. You were still you."

"Well, Dakota and Willow are gone to bring her in. We'll know more about what's going on when she gets here." Buffy looked around at all of them. "In the meantime, we have some work to do. Tara, I'd like you to use your magic to put some protective spells on my house and Dakota's house. Anya, I have a huge favor to ask you in the form of taking the girls and getting them out of town. I don't trust the Council not to try and use them against us."

"Dakota has a friend in San Francisco who has agreed to put you guys up for as long as needed. I have directions and things at the house."

She turned to Giles. "I need you to hit the books, Research guy," she requested, smiling a bit. "I need to know what might be so dangerous about Dakota that the Council would kill her where they would let Angel live." She looked at Xander. "Can you help him, please?"

The next morning, Janna met the Boudreaux at their room again for breakfast and to get on the road. Victoria Boudreaux frowned at her. "Ragamuffin!" she pronounced. Then she swept away toward the in-hotel restaurant. Janna looked at Alexandre, who smiled and shrugged, saying something to the effect that Victoria would be on the warpath about Janna's appearance. The girl sighed, debated explaining that she had no other clothing, and let it go, following Alexandre in his wife's wake.

Breakfast being finished, Janna discovered what Alexandre had meant. Victoria took over driving the Crown Victoria after they checked out of the hotel and drove them immediately to the nearest shopping mall. She rode over Janna's protests that she really couldn't accept these things, she didn't need them, and she'd be fine by saying, "Casey, I have no grandchildren to spoil. You will indulge me."

Alexandre good-humoredly followed them all about the mall, carrying packages, as Victoria led them from store to store, ordering Janna to pick out clothing she liked in some stores and picking thins out for her in others. Janna cringed every time the platinum card was swiped, ringing up obscene amounts of money. She tried in the first couple of stores to pick out inexpensive items, but Victoria would not have it and, when the whirlwind three-hour excursion was over, Janna had enough new clothing to fill three closets, several new pairs of shoes from sneakers to Doc Martens, a huge wheeled suitcase and two new backpacks to carry her things in and, from the last store, where Victoria insisted on indulgence over Janna's voluble protests, a portable CD player and five new CDs.

They sat, purchases complete, in the mall's food court, eating ice cream cones, when Janna looked at Victoria. "Tell me the truth, please. Why?"

Victoria looked at Janna as though calculating, and sighed. "You have to understand the grandmotherly impulse," she began explaining, and over the next twenty minutes told Janna about her daughter Claudia and her granddaughter Marie, who would have been eight if they hadn't both died in a house fire which had been set by Claudia's psychotic ex-husband Rafael. As she finished her story, she stated baldly, "You look nearly exactly as Claudia did when she was your age. Fresh, young, vibrant, healthy, all these things. Claudia was a bit smaller than you, though—she was quite frail. And she was blonde. But other than those two things, you could be her. This was, you understand, fifty years ago. She would have been sixty-one this year, her daughter Marie would have been forty-nine. I am eighty years old, I have more money than I will ever be able to spend, and I have no grandchildren to whom I should give it. Claudia was our only child, Marie was hers. And so I should do what I can to feed the grandmother in me by pretending, for a brief time, that you are the child of my own little Marie, that I am truly your Maman, and I may spoil you as I would have spoiled her, had she been born. For me, it eases some of the pain." She sighed. "You will understand of course that you are not the only child for whom I have done this."

Janna felt tears gather in her eyes. "Thank you, Maman," she whispered. "You are truly an angel."

Victoria stood then, briskly, throwing off her grief and touching Janna on the head gently. "Casey, dear, I think sometimes it is the other way around. Come, now. We go to Texas."

As they pulled out of Little Rock, heading southwest, Victoria asked about the phone call of the previous night. "Did you speak with your sister?"

Janna nodded as she went about unwrapping the cellophane from one of her new CDs, by a band new to the national scene called Dingoes Ate My Baby. "Yeah. A friend of hers is going to pick me up tonight in Fort Worth."

"Very good. I shouldn't have let you go on by yourself, you know; we'd have taken you to California," Victoria stated. Alexandre concurred wholeheartedly in Creole.

Janna smiled. "Thank you. But it's so far out of your way. I know you said you were going back to Houma tomorrow and I didn't want to inconvenience you any more."

"You are hardly an inconvenience, cherie. And you will keep in touch with us after you have arrived at your sister's, oui?" Victoria smiled. "We should like to know that you are safe."

"I will," Janna promised. Then she smiled widely, inserted the earbuds into her ears, and cranked up her new CD player. The miles rolled beneath them as they passed through Arkansas and into Texas.

Janna was asleep when they arrived in Fort Worth. Alexandre woke her up gently. "Ah, we at de hotel naw," he told her. "You gotta fine you sistah."

She scrambled out of the car and dug into the pocket of her new jeans. There she found the slip of paper with Dakota's cell number written on it. "I have her cell phone number."

"Ah, den you go an call, oui? I gonna have dis bellhop, he take de bags in. You gonna stay here wit us tonight?"

Janna shook her head. "I really can't. I have to get to my sister. It's very important."

"Okay den," he replied, and suddenly his eyes filled with tears. He gathered her into a sudden bear hug, saying something to her in completely incoherent Creole, and then he turned to the bellhop and began barking orders. Janna went into the lobby and asked to use the clerk's telephone. She was let behind the counter and sat at a desk, where she dialed the number on the slip of paper. The phone was answered on the first ring.

Janna looked around and found the hotel name and address on a piece of stationery. She gave the information to Dakota, who promised that she was barely thirty minutes away from Janna. "I'll meet you in the hotel lobby," Janna said.

"Fine," Dakota replied. "I'll see you soon." They disconnected, and Janna went back out into the lobby to find Victoria waiting for her next to her bags.

Janna nodded. "Actually, it's her friend Dakota. She said she'll be here in about half an hour."

"Very good. I will wait with you." Victoria looked up at her. "You grew up in England."

Victoria nodded. "I have worked very hard to rid myself of the Creole accent; therefore, I am extremely sensitive to those who have accents themselves. You grew up in London, in an upper-class home."

Victoria nodded. "I was sent to a finishing school in Baton Rouge as a teenager. This is where I was taught by a New York woman to speak with very little accent. Before I went, I spoke exactly as my Alexandre does. My Claudia also went to finishing school. This is where she met Rafael. He was master of horse at the school. And my beautiful Marie, she would have gone as well if she had lived. She would have done so many, many things." Victoria sighed. "And her memory is alive in you, now. And I think your sister's friend is now here."

Janna turned toward the revolving door, which was just now disgorging two young women. The first to exit was a lovely redhead, but the second, the brunette, was the one to whom Janna's eyes immediately went. With a sense innate to her, she felt a tingle at the back of her spine. She had come to associate this tingle with being in the same room with another Slayer potential; and here was Dakota. Janna stood and met the two women halfway across the floor. "Dakota?" she asked, looking up at the brunette.

Victoria stood and hugged her. "I have put our address and telephone number in your bag. You will write when you have settled in, oui?"

Janna nodded. "Oui, Maman," she replied, smiling. She waited until Victoria had made her stately way to the elevator banks and gone upstairs before grabbing her bags and turning back toward Willow and Dakota. "Let's get the hell out of here."

Quentin Travers made his way through Customs and Security in JFK International Airport with a minimum of difficulty, then made his way outside, followed by several of his Watchers, for a cigar. As he stood contemplating the Manhattan skyline, two of his operatives were at the Delta desk, wrangling several tickets to Atlanta. He had decided on the trip that the wisest course of action would be to check up on his operatives who were watching the Markham home and make sure the girl wasn't there, then head west to California.

His operatives came to him to tell him that there was no way for them all to fly out before the next day, so he sent two of his most trusted men ahead and had another lackey reserve several suites at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel for the rest of them. Once at the hotel and settled in, he placed a long-distance phone call.

As he stood listening to the line ring, he thought about what he would say if the other end was answered. He waited for the line to pick up and eventually it did, but it was with the tinny sound of a message machine. A young woman's voice spoke cheerily at him. "Hi! This is Buffy. Giles has no idea how to work his answering machine, so I'm doing it for him."

In the background, Travers heard a distinctly British voice which said, "Oh, do get on with it, Buffy."

There was a snicker, and the young woman's voice went on. "So anyway, Giles isn't here, so please leave him a message at the sound of the..."—she was cut off by a younger voice which interjected "blood-curdling scream" and then resumed, "...and if he can figure out how to operate the telephone, he'll call you back." The sentence was punctuated by a scream which would have befitted the heroine of a grade-B black-and-white fifties horror flick, and then the more normal message-machine beep.

Travers cleared his throat. "Rupert, this is Quentin Travers. I'm in the States on Council business and we need to talk. I'm at the Ritz-Carlton in New York City tonight, please call me so that we can work out some arrangements." He left the hotel number and his suite number, then rang off and turned to one of his lackeys. "See about getting us a decent tea in here, hmm?"

He settled back in a comfortable chair which faced out the huge plate-glass window into the slowly darkening New York City afternoon and reflected. Giles was admittedly one of his less-capable Watchers. The man was just short of being a failure. Surely it would be easy to manipulate him into giving up the daywalker. It was just a matter of finding the right words.

"He obviously thinks I'm... what's your term, Buffy? Mentally challenged," Giles commented to the Scoobies, who were staring at the answering machine that Quentin Travers's voice had just spoken from. It had startled them into silence when it kicked on, as Giles had forgotten to turn the ringer on and they hadn't known anyone was calling. In retrospect, Giles was glad of his oversight, since it meant he now had some warning that Travers was looking for him.

"So Janna was right," Buffy observed. "They are chasing her. And they probably want Dakota, too."

"Almost without a doubt," Giles replied. "They most likely want them both dead."

Buffy nodded. "Well, that's not going to happen." She stood. "I'm going to get the girls from school. The sooner they're safe, the better off we'll all be."

Once the school office's required papers were signed, Buffy walked outside into the sunshine to wait for the girls, who came outside shortly, Dawn carrying Mercedes' bag while Mercedes shrugged into her Sunnydale Junior High Band jacket. "Hey, girls."

"Hop in and I'll explain. We've got to get you packed." They climbed into the Jeep and headed toward Revello Drive, and Buffy attempted to explain the situation. "The guys from the Watcher's Council are back," she told them. "They're gunning for Dakota and they pretty much want her dead. We don't know why. But things are gonna get ugly around here, probably tomorrow, and I don't want the two of you in danger. So you're going with Anya to stay with a friend of Dakota's."

"We can take care of ourselves," Dawn began to protest hotly, but she was cut off by Mercedes' calming hand on her arm.

"I ain't so sure about that, Dawn," Mercedes said quietly. "These are guys that we already know don't play fair. I know either of us could hold our own in a fair fight, but can you honestly say you can protect yourself against a grown man who's tryin' to kill ya?" She shook her head. "I cain't. And besides, what if he don't try to kill ya? You wanna get snatched, held for ransom, in a trade? How would you feel to hear somebody demand an exchange—your life for Dakota's?"

Dawn stared at Mercedes for a long moment. "How do you know about stuff like this?"

Dawn sighed, then grinned. "Okay. San Francisco, Buffy? Can we go to the Castro while we're there?"

Janna went to sleep in the back seat with her headphones on, and Dakota and Willow began swapping out every hour of driving. There was no way they could sleep the night anywhere with the Council hot on their heels. They needed to get back to Sunnydale as fast as possible so that they could be firmly entrenched before the Council arrived. Therefore they were driving hell-bent-for-leather west to California. The sun was coming up as they crossed the county line, and by the time they pulled up to Buffy's house, Janna was waking up, much against her will. Willow smiled at her. "We're here, Janna," she told her. "Don't worry about your bags, we'll come back for them later."

They shuffled Janna out of the car and up to the porch, where the younger girl felt much as though she were meeting the Queen. She found herself quite tongue-tied, and the women laughed gently at her as Buffy took her inside and tried to ease her nervousness. She finally got the girl to calm down by asking questions about her trip, which brought on a full-scale epic narrative that came to a grinding halt in a truck stop bathroom. Janna's eyes went wide and she dashed out of the house, went rummaging through her bags in the back of the Jeep, and dashed back in again, carrying a wooden box.

"These are the glamours Linda gave me," she explained. "I forgot to take my scar off." She did so, then, and then rubbed the spot briefly where it had been, grinning. "It itches."

Janna offered it to her. "Keep it. I won't need it any more, now that I'm here, and you're a witch, right? So maybe you can use it."

Willow smiled gratefully and began rummaging through the box, examining each little bag carefully. Janna resumed her narrative. "That's when the Boudreaux found me," she explained. "Boy, were they weird! But my Watcher always said 'Don't look a gift horse in the mouth,' and I guess they were my gift horse, because did you see all the stuff they bought for me? Plus putting me up in the hotel with them and taking me all the way to Fort Worth. I was a little creeped out at first—they could've been ax-murderers or something—but they turned out to be just... well, eccentric, I guess."

Buffy nodded and then sent the girl upstairs to get some sleep. Once they heard the snick of her door closing, Buffy and Willow looked at one another. "Does it just seem to you like this trip was way too easy for her?" Buffy commented.

Willow nodded. "In great literature they call it the deus ex machina—god in the machine. It means basically that divine intervention steps in to make sure that certain things happen. Like Janna getting here before the Council to warn us that they're coming after Dakota."

Buffy nodded. "Well I wonder which deus is trying to get involved in our machines?" she mused. "This makes a Slayer very nervous."

The ringing of the telephone called the Scoobies away from breakfast the next morning. They had gathered at Buffy's house to plan for the upcoming trouble with the Council, and so that they could all become acquainted with Janna. They were all bonding over pancakes when the phone began to ring, and Janna, who was up and on her way to the kitchen for seconds, asked Buffy if she wanted Janna to grab it. Buffy nodded, and Janna picked up the telephone. "Hullo, Summers residence," she greeted, and then, as a voice roared at her from the other end, she paled and then began to cry.

"Janna Markham!" Quentin Travers' voice screamed at her, loudly enough for everyone at the table to hear him. "You've compromised the security of the Council! You ungrateful little brat, do you realize what you've done?"

The instant the tears began rolling down Janna's face, Buffy was at the telephone, taking it away from her and pulling the girl tightly to her in a hug. She cut Travers' diatribe off with a sharp "Shut up, Travers!" Then, when she had silence, she took over the conversation. "Let me explain something to you. You're not getting Janna. You're not getting Dakota. You're going to get on your plane and you're going to go back to England and you're going to leave us alone."

"You're not calling the shots on this one, Summers," he growled at her, and fell silent when she laughed at him.

"Actually," she responded, "I kind of think I am. Because, you see, I have two extremely powerful witches; a daywalking vampire who, according to you people, is a potential Slayer; a potential Slayer; a Watcher; a thousand-year-old ex-demon; a guy with a big heart and a hell of a right hook; and, well, I'm the Slayer. So, Travers, what have you got?"

He was silent for a long moment, and then he snarled, "This isn't over." The line was abruptly disconnected as he slammed the phone down on his end.

Buffy pulled the weeping child close to her. "It's okay. He's gone. And we're not gonna let him get you."

Buffy blinked. Huh? She pushed the child back from her, holding the girls shoulders at arms'-length. "They what?"

"They kidnapped me. When I was eight. I was at boarding school, and my Watcher came into the dorm one night and drugged me. By the time I woke up, I was in a first-class seat on the Concorde, halfway across the Atlantic Ocean. I wasn't allowed near a telephone for years, and by the time I was, the one time I was able to actually use it without being seen, my parents' phone number didn't work any more. I was never allowed to send mail, and I was never allowed to go anywhere out of sight of a Council operative. They wanted to make sure I couldn't escape. And then, once I was old enough to understand my calling, I knew how important it was; but I wanted to go home so bad!" She shook her head. "And they want to take me back. I knew they wouldn't just let me go. I knew it."

Janna nodded. "I just got lucky when I escaped," she told them. "I was planning on climbing out of the window in the ladies' loo, but he went to the gents' first, and I was just able to walk out for the first time since I was eight. I couldn't believe my luck. And then, when I heard him—and he knew me, Buffy, he knew who I was! He's going to take me back and I don't want to go, I want to go home, I want to see my mother! I've got five brothers and sisters that I haven't seen since the oldest of them was six, and I want to go home!"

Buffy pulled her close again. "You will. I promise. When this is over, I'll see to it that you go home. I swear it."

They moved back to the table. "You know he's going to head straight here," Giles warned them.

Buffy nodded. "That's why we're going to be ready for them. I've got an idea." She began to outline it, and the heads around her began to nod.

When Quentin Travers stepped off the airplane in Sunnydale, preceding his entourage, he was amazed to see young Janna Markham standing out in the open, in the middle of the airport, staring defiantly at him. He immediately started toward her but was cut off halfway there by two people who walked in front of him, and when they were past, she was gone. He looked about wildly and saw her scampering across the concourse. He took off walking after her, but she turned a corner and, by the time he got there, he couldn't find her.

She had been dressed in a red hooded sweatshirt and blue jeans, and he looked around for those colors, spying them on a lithe figure which seemed to be hiding behind a post. Then suddenly they were on another figure at the end of the concourse, near the escalator. He made a split-second decision to head for the escalator, and was nearly there when distracted by the sight of a figure in red and blue ducking out of the ladies' restroom. He looked around and, for the first time, realized that he had become separated from his lackeys. He couldn't see any of them. Then he felt a tap on his shoulder and turned back around to find Janna standing directly in front of him. "How ya doin', Travers?" she asked in a voice that wasn't her voice.

"What? Who are you?" He summoned his best British manner. "This is not amusing -" he began, but she spoke a sudden word and he couldn't make his voice work.

She smiled at him then, and it was not a pleasant smile. "Dakota Walsh, Mr. Travers. Why don't you come with me." She clamped a hand down on his elbow and began forcibly leading him toward the escalator, speaking enthusiastically, and rather loudly, to her "Uncle Dave" about how great it was to see him again and how much he was going to love Sunnydale.

They were met by another Janna at the luggage claim. She had Quentin's bag in her hand, and took him by the other elbow. "Hey, Karen, you've got Uncle Dave's bag?" Dakota said loudly.

"Karen" grinned. "Yeah, I've got it. Let's go. The car's outside, waiting for us."

They steered Travers out the door and to the loading zone, where Xander and yet another Janna were waiting with Xander's car. "Karen" stepped back to stop him trying to run, and Dakota informed the Englishman in a low voice that if he didn't get in the car, she'd drain him dry and save them all the trouble. He got in, followed by Dakota and "Karen," and they drove away quickly. By the time any of the Council members got out the front door of the airport, looking for their lost leader, he was nowhere in sight.

As they pulled out of the parking lot, the Janna in the front seat murmured, "Let the spell be ended," and dumped some colored sand out the car window, scattering it into the wind. As she did so, the three Jannas' features changed. Dakota became a young woman of indeterminate age with brown hair and eyes, "Karen" became Buffy Summers, and the Janna in the front seat became the red-haired witch Willow Rosenberg. Travers began to splutter, and Dakota turned and glared at him. "Shut up, Travers, or I'll gag you."

They drove then in silence to Dakota's house, where Giles waited for them. Their captive was deposited on the sofa and glared at by all five of them for a long moment. Then, finally, Dakota turned away from him, her lip curled in disgust. "I gotta say," she commented to the room in general, "If the alternative was working for this piece of scum, I'm glad I got turned into a vampire."

"You won't win this, you know," Travers commented. "My operatives will find me. And when they do, you'll all die. Including the little rogue you're harboring."

Buffy smirked. "Seems to me you've got a lot of rogues on your hands, Travers, and none of them so far have proved easy to even find, much less kill. How many assassins have you sent into prison after Faith? I do keep up with her, you know. You tried to kill me when I was eighteen and I was too smart for you then. You can't even find Janna; the only reason you knew she was even in Sunnydale is because she answered the telephone. As for Dakota, we haven't found the thing yet that will kill her."

He glared at her. "You're a pathetic excuse for a Slayer, harboring vampires in your very midst, calling them members of your... your Scooby Gang. Don't think the Council doesn't know how Angelus got released -"

His words were cut off when Dakota lifted him by the throat, choking off both tirade and breath. Her vamp face was on as she hissed at him, "Don't you even speak his name. Angel is more human than you are, you sack of shit, and Angelus wasn't Buffy's fault. If anyone's to be blamed for what happened, it's Jenny Calendar, because she kept silent when she should and could have spoken out to prevent what occurred. And she died for her sins. So you shut the hell -" her voice cut off suddenly, and the others knew immediately what had happened—she'd accidentally made eye contact with him.

Buffy and Xander stepped forward and tried to break the eye contact, putting their hands in front of Travers' and Dakota's eyes, but noting happened. Then they tried to physically separate the two of them and couldn't. Willow tried to magickally separate them to no avail, and they were just about to hit Dakota over the head with something heavy when both voices spoke together.

They were both silent then for a long moment, during which no one moved, all five pairs of eyes riveted on daywalker and Council man. A small sound behind them startled them, but it was just Janna creeping down the stairs to see what was going on. Buffy beckoned her into the room, and they waited to see what else would happen with Dakota and Quentin. Janna came in the room and stood behind Buffy, watching the odd scene unfold before her. The two voices spoke again, but this time they sounded like one voice.

Willow nodded. "I can sense the magick," she said, "but I can't tell where it's coming from or what it's supposed to do."

"Fear not," said a voice from Dakota that was entirely not Dakota's voice. "What grows in the dark dies in the light. The Prophecy has sucked the life from the Council of Watchers for centuries. Now is the time for fulfillment. Fear not."

And then a voice that was not his came from Quentin Travers' throat. "For it shall come to pass in the latter days, in the place of the sun."

"You know, if I had a nickel for every time I heard a prophecy about me that talks about the place of the sun, I wouldn't have to work a day in my life." Buffy snorted.

Giles nodded in agreement and they waited for something else to happen. When it didn't, Janna went into the kitchen and returned with Oreo cookies and milk for everyone on a tray. "Here. Biscuits. I don't know about any of you, but I'm fashed."

"They're fighting," Willow repeated. "That's why they're tied up like that. She wants to get it out, and he doesn't. So they're struggling over who's going to win. But... he's going to lose. Because she's not the only one who wants it out. There's someone else there, too. Someone I can sense but not really get a fix on." She shook her head in frustration. "This could take a while."

Buffy shrugged, taking a glass of milk from Janna. "We've got time." To the younger girl, she gave a smile. "Thanks, sweetie."

Janna, complimented by her idol, blushed furiously and had to look somewhere else. Willow and Buffy shared a grin of amusement at the girl's hero-worship. And then the voice that was not Dakota's spoke from her throat. "The Chosen One."

Dakota spoke again, but to everyone's surprise, it was her own voice that spoke in a struggled whisper. "Willow. Help me."

There was an agonizingly long moment of silence. Beads of perspiration broke out on Dakota's forehead as she fought to say what she wanted to say. "Grows... dark... dies... light..." she grated.

"What grows in the dark dies in the light," Willow repeated. Then suddenly her own personal light dawned. "Dies in the light!" She turned to the others. "Cover your eyes. Turn around and cover your eyes. Now."

With no questions, they all obeyed. Willow stepped back from Dakota and Quentin, raised her hands together and pointed them at the two interlocked figures. She whispered a quick prayer to the Goddess that this would work, and then shouted a single word at the top of her lungs. "Illuminate!"

The flash of light was so bright that the world glowed nuclear around Buffy for a split second. Even with her back to it and her eyes tightly shut and covered with her hands, she still had spots before her eyes when she finally opened them again. Her eyesight returned then and she turned at the same time as Xander and Giles to find Willow, Dakota and Travers all lying on the floor in different places. Willow was struggling into a sitting position and Buffy went to her immediately, helping her up and into a chair. Xander got Dakota onto the couch and smoothed back her hair, talking to her in gentle tones, trying to get her to regain consciousness. Giles and Janna both walked over to stand over Quentin Travers, who groaned as his eyes fluttered open. Janna waited until he had focused clearly on her and then fetched him a sharp kick in the ribs before Giles could stop her. "Jerk," she said to the fallen Watcher, then returned to her cookies.

Xander was concerned, not being able to wake Dakota up, when suddenly her eyes opened. He jumped back in startlement. They were completely white—no iris or pupil could be seen. The others, except for the still-floored Travers, approached her cautiously, Willow leaning heavily on Buffy. "This is the prophecy," she said suddenly in a soft voice. The voice was a man's, and had a distinctive English accent. "The prophecy is given to the Council of Watchers of London, on the twenty-eighth day of August in the Year of our Lord one thousand two hundred forty-seven. For it shall come to pass in the latter days, in the place of the sun, that the Chosen One shall initiate the destruction of the Watchers. She herself shall turn and face the sun, and shall ally with the sorceress. She shall conquer Death and live forever, even to the end of the age, and from the get of the witch shall the new order be sprung. This is the prophecy."

Then Dakota's eyes were her own again, just for a second, before they rolled up in the back of her head and she passed out.

The minions of Quentin Travers were in a terrible uproar. After he stormed away from them in the airport, they lost sight of him in a sudden flood of people that seemed to magically come out of nowhere and, by the time the flood abated, he was nowhere to be found. The seven of them fanned out and searched the tiny airport from the top to the bottom, but he was gone.

After a lengthy consult in the lobby of the airport, the Watchers decided to get a motel room according to the original plan and wait to see if they were contacted by their fearless leader. They were finally rewarded that afternoon. The telephone rang and three of them jumped for it. The most senior of them stared the others down and then answered. "Yes, hullo?"

"Miss Dobson, d'you recall when we were here the last time, the miserable little shop kept by Mr. Giles?"

"Yes, sir, Mr. Travers. We'll be there, sir." She hesitated, then added, "Mr. Travers? How did you get there?"

The line went dead, and the minions of Quentin Travers began to move in a flurry. If they wanted to be at the magic store by sundown, they had to move fast.

Willow hung the phone up and turned to grin at her audience. "Dispello," she said in Travers' voice, and then she coughed. "Ugh," she continued in her own voice. "That spell makes you feel like you've got a cotton wad in your throat." She then turned to Travers and, with the same word, broke the spell that had held him silent while she used his voice to contact his compatriots.

"So they're going to be there at sundown?" Buffy asked. At Willow's nod, she glanced at Giles and Dakota. "All right, then. We'd better get moving."

They piled into the car once more, Buffy having to bodily force Travers in, and headed down to the magic shop to plan their attack. Xander stood lookout at the front door, keeping an eye out for the Watchers when they arrived. Buffy and Dakota tied Travers up in the workout room in back. After he was bound, but before Buffy gagged him, Dakota looked down at the man with something like disgusted sympathy. "You poor fool, Travers. Do you realize what you've done? You've jeopardized yourself for something you could never have stopped in the first place. Your Slayer has already conquered death. So have I."

"Impossible," he replied. "She's very mortal—it's been proved—and you're just a walking corpse."

"She shall conquer death, Travers, and live forever. Do you know what it means to conquer death?" He shook his head around the gag Buffy was tying to his face and Dakota knelt in front of him. "To quote the immortal words of Jesus Christ Superstar, 'To conquer death you only have to die.' Well, that's been done. Think about it."

They left him then and walked back to the front of the store. Janna had just called Tara in, then sat on the counter, watching the proceedings. Willow and Giles were busy setting up a circle when the other witch arrived. "Hey!" she exclaimed, taking in the mystic symbols drawn on the floor in chalk. "Um... wh-what's going on?"

Willow grinned. "It's a whole big Scooby thing. We figured you ought to be here. Let Janna fill you in while we finish up here."

Janna brightened considerably and began to tell the story to Tara; her odd accent, half-British, half south Georgia, provided a soothing counterpoint to the slowly increasing tension in the small shop. She began with her Watcher receiving the call from Giles, and Tara paid rapt attention to her, bursting into giggles as the girl aped the Creole drawl of Alexandre Boudreaux with comic results.

By the time Janna was through the story, Tara was reeling in amazement, both at the unfeeling cruelty of the Watchers' Council and by the tenacity of the young girl before her, who had crossed the Atlantic in a cargo hold and then hitchhiked all the way across America in order to save the lives of people she didn't even know. She couldn't, however, think of a way to express herself without stammering and embarrassing both herself and Janna, so she simply settled for a couple of awed "wows" and a "holy crap" at the end of the story.

"For right now, just be here," Buffy stated bluntly. "Like Willow said, it's a Scooby thing. I felt like we should all be here and, since you're one of us, we called you in. Now, you should know, there's a chance that this could get ugly. If any of these guys are smarter than they were before, we could have trouble."

"Not to worry, B," said a familiar and entirely unexpected voice from the front door, one which caused everyone in the room to gasp and spin around to see the young brunette woman who stood in the doorway, a broad grin on her face. "Cuz, you know," she continued, stepping into the shop, "Trouble kinda tends to follow me around."

The minions of Quentin Travers took a leaf from the book they'd studied the last time they were in Sunnydale and approached the magic shop with a great deal of stealth and caution. Miss Dobson, the most senior among the Watchers, found the boy who was supposed to be playing watchdog. He was looking down the street to his left, and Dobson, fortunately for herself, was coming up on the boy's right. Dobson reached into her pocket, pulled out a handful of small copper American coins—pence? No, she didn't think Americans called them pence—and tossed a couple of them at the boy. One of them caught him in the small of the back, the other went down the back of the boy's shirt. He turned, a look of confusion crossing his face, and felt at his back. Dobson heard him mutter something about bees and go on looking back toward his left again.

Dobson reached around the corner again and threw three more coins, this time with a bit more force. The boy rubbed at the back of his head, where he now had a stinging spot, and decided to go investigate. Dobson ducked back behind a Dumpster and watched as the boy reached the head of the alley he was in. She threw another coin, this time at the boy's face. She missed and it only grazed the dark hair, but it got the boy's attention anyway and he started into the alley, fists clenched. Dobson crouched behind the Dumpster, clutching a piece of broken chair leg, until the boy was just in the right spot, then she jumped out and clouted the boy soundly on the back of the head. The boy went down like a stone. She then let go a piercing whistle which summoned the other watchers to her.

The seven of them stood around the unconscious boy, looking at him as they would a particularly noxious bit of foulness. "What do we do with him now, Miss Dobson?" a junior Watcher by the name of Birdwell asked.

Dobson thought for a moment. "Birdwell, I want you and Smythe and Charles to take the boy and secure him somewhere that he can't make any trouble. I don't particularly care where. Telephone the shop in about twenty minutes and I'll give you further instructions. You are not, absolutely not to disclose the location of the boy to anyone but me, and only if I give you the following code phrase: Her Majesty's Secret Service."

Birdwell looked at Dobson for a long moment as though he suspected the senior Watcher had lost her mind. Dobson finally exhaled sharply in frustration. "They've a witch thrown in with them, man! Think on it! With her magick, she can impersonate anyone she wants! Do you really think that was Mr. Travers on the phone, working in joyous harmony with a rogue Slayer, a rogue Watcher, a rogue Potential and a daywalking vampire potential? Think, man! It was the witch! They're holding Mr. Travers hostage for something—no telling what. So we go in prepared. We hold this boy. You three take him, as I said, and keep him somewhere that he can't get away. Keep him alive. He's no good to us dead. In fact, I'd be willing to wager that his death knell will be all of ours as well. The Slayer values her people, useless though they may appear at first glance." She paused to shoot another withering glance at the boy's unmoving form, then looked back up at Birdwell. "You three move, now. Frasier, Campbell, Beecham, you're with me."

Birdwell and his two compatriots lifted the unconscious body of the boy and scampered away with him as quickly as they could go. Dobson turned back toward the mouth of the alley. "Campbell, go look out there. See if there's anyone else out front."

The blonde woman crept silently streetward, edged around the corner of the building and peeked. She paused for a moment, then crept silently back. "I saw a woman enter the shop," she reported. "Young, probably late teens or early twenties, dark hair, fairly muscular. If I didn't know better, I could have sworn... but that's impossible." She shook her head. "It must just be a customer."

Dobson eyed Campbell. "Miss Campbell. Your precognitive skills may be legendarily lacking, but I do trust what you may have seen with your eyes. Please tell me what you saw or think you saw."

She bit her bottom lip, wringing her hands momentarily. "Well, Miss Dobson, I... I just... well, if I hadn't known better, I could have sworn it was Faith."

Dobson examined Campbell's face. "Faith is in prison, Miss Campbell. In Los Angeles."

She nodded. "I know. That's why I was so unsure of myself. But it must be simply a customer. It must be."

Sundown in Sunnydale. All four of the Watchers in the alley whipped out large crosses. "Let's go," Dobson ordered. They began to move toward the mouth of the alley.

"Xander?" Faith looked around, confusion crossing her features. "How'm I supposed to know?"

"He was outside. How did you get in here without him warning us?" Buffy snarled.

Power crackled around Willow's hands. "If you've done anything to hurt him, I swear -"

Faith began to back towards the door. "Jesus Christ, could you people chill the hell out? I never saw him."

Dakota stepped forward and laid a hand on Willow's shoulder. "Honey. Calm down. She says she hasn't seen him. Ever think maybe she's telling the truth?"

Willow spun around to glare at Dakota, her eyes flashing black and then back to their normal greenish color again, but the expression that flitted onto and then stayed on Willow's face was a mask of pure fury. "Dakota, how can you say that? This is Faith! She worked for the Mayor! She freaking tried to kill us all!"

"Willow!" Dakota's forceful tone caught the attention of everyone in the room, including a certain rogue Slayer who was attempting to edge her way back out the door. They all stared at her, even as the power on Willow's hands dimmed somewhat. Dakota held eye contact for a few seconds, making sure she had Willow's undivided attention. "All right, that's better. Now listen to me, and listen carefully. I don't care what your previous grievances with her are. But I know exactly who she is. She's Faith, the Vampire Slayer. She's the Chosen One. As in 'shall initiate the destruction of the Watchers.' Look around you, woman! You have two Slayers and two Slayer potentials, in the place of the sun, in the latter days, none of whom have any reason to love the Council of Watchers. There's a reason why she's here, and there's a reason why it's now!"

"Yeah," Willow spat back. "Because now is the time she decided to come here to become a pain in our collective ass again."

Dakota rubbed her temple with her fingers. "Look... Will..." she sighed heavily, but was interrupted by the rise of power crackling between Willow's hands again.

"Willow! Shut up!" Dakota's face suddenly showed anger—the first time any of them had seen any emotion on her face at all besides fondness and a gentle tolerance. "Jesus H. bloody fucking Christ, do you listen at all?"

Willow flinched back as though she'd been struck, but the black flashes in her eyes stopped and the electric crackles up and down her arms dissipated completely. "Huh?" she whimpered, barely audible. The hurt in her eyes was obvious.

Dakota made a few false starts and then snarled wordlessly. She turned and pinned Faith with a glare. "You stay here. I don't care what anybody says to you—stay here." She gave Buffy and Giles the benefit of her stare next. "Don't say anything to her." She took Willow by the wrist and pulled her back into the training room. Once there, she pushed Willow into a sitting position on a bench and walked over to the punching bag. She spent a few moments relieving her mental turmoil on the bag, stopping when she hit the bag hard enough to split the skin on her knuckles. Then, sucking on said knuckles, she walked back over to stand in front of Willow.

"Look," she began, "I'm sorry I lost my temper. I shouldn't have said those things to you. I was outta line." She took a deep breath, glancing over at the glowering Travers, who was bound as comfortably as possible in a chair in the corner and lowered her voice. "Look, you heard that... whatever it was... talking. You heard the prophecy. Hell, I freakin' practically puked the thing up, much against my will I might add. And it said the Chosen One. Did it say Buffy? No. It said the Chosen One. Buffy's Chosen. Faith is Chosen. Janna's going to be Chosen someday. I was supposed to have been Chosen. That's four contestants, sweetie, and it significantly ups our odds of having the right one. We need Faith. And we need her without a lot of anger and antagonism. So what I need you to do is put aside everything that you're angry at her about until this is over. Okay? I need you a hundred percent here, sweetie. We've got Watchers coming any second. And we've gotta figure out what happened to Xander. Those things are more important than an old grudge."

Willow sighed, looking at the ceiling, the floor, anywhere but at Dakota. Finally, she swallowed and looked Dakota in the eyes. The daywalker was hit by an intense wave of love, fear, confusion and desolation. She nodded then, unsurprised by what she saw. She took Willow into her arms, holding her close when the redhead began to cry. "I know" she whispered into Willow's ear. "I knew it from the beginning. But I was willing to take what you were willing to give. But I understand. Don't worry about a thing. Okay?"

Willow nodded, regathering her self-control and wiping away the tears. "O-o-okay. Okay. I can do this."

"All right then, come on. You've got a glamour to cast, and I've got a Slayer to talk to."

They re-entered the store front to find everyone in nearly the same places as when they left, the exception being Faith, who had taken a seat on the floor, leaning against a shelf. Dakota glanced at Buffy, a clear question on her face. Buffy shook her head and inclined it towards Dakota, gracefully giving over control of the moment to the vampire. Dakota stepped forward. "All right. It's almost sundown, so we don't have a lot of time. Tara, would you be willing to undergo a little glamour for us? Buffy, Giles and I have been talking and we've got an idea about how we can go about dealing with our friendly Watchers without the use of the actual Mr. Travers in there." At Tara's shy nod, Dakota turned to the brunette near the door. "Faith, would you be willing to come outside with me and have a little chat while we go on a Xander hunt?"

"You got it, lady," Faith replied, standing. Then, suddenly flirtatious, she asked, "So, what's your deal?"

Dakota morphed into her game face and grinned at the Slayer. "I'm Dakota Walsh. And you and I have a lot to talk about."

They never got a chance to leave the store. Willow and Giles had taken Tara in the back room to cast the glamour on her and Faith was reaching for the door handle when the door was pushed open from the outside. The bell jangled as two men and two women, dressed impeccably in black suits, pressed themselves into the shop. Dakota and Faith fell back immediately into semi-defensive postures at the top of the steps. Janna slid off the counter and moved closer to Buffy, who picked up a crossbow off the research table and held it loosely at the ready.

"Come now," the first man said, a patently false smile plastered across his face. "There's no need for this. We're all on the same side, aren't we? My name is Dobson, Mary Dobson. These are my associates: William Frasier, Claire Beecham, and David Campbell."

Claire Beecham stepped forward slightly. "Janna, you've been very naughty. You do understand that, don't you?"

Buffy glanced behind her with an expression so quizzical as to be nearly dumbfounded. Janna shook her head. "My new Watcher," she murmured. "Believe she thinks I'm simple." She raised her voice then. "Actually, Miss Beecham, I think I've done rather well for myself, considering."

Miss Beecham's eyes narrowed, but she subsided. Miss Dobson took over the conversation. "Now, then. We need to see Mr. Travers, please."

Janna nodded and scampered back into the training room, where she was confronted by the sight of Willow, Giles, and two Quentin Traverses. She grinned broadly. "Excellent, really excellent. And not before time, either—Miss Dobson, Mr. Frasier, Miss Beecham and Mr. Campbell are out front."

"Oh, dear." Giles cleaned his glasses. "Well, we must simply give it our best effort. Tara, are you quite sure of this?"

"Wait!" Janna said. "Tara, you have to know who they are. It will seem odd if you don't. The blonde woman is Miss Dobson, the man without glasses is Frasier. The man with glasses is Mr. Campbell, and the brunette is Miss Beecham."

The four of them trooped back out front to hear the four Watchers murmuring together near the front of the store. They all turned as Giles, Willow, Janna and Travers came out of the back room. "Ah," said Dobson, "Mr. Travers. Are you well, sir?"

"I am," Travers replied. "I believe our business here is concluded. We're going to leave Sunnydale, Miss Dobson. Janna will remain here to train with the current Slayer and her Watcher."

Dobson blinked in surprise, and suddenly Mr. Frasier spoke for the first time since they had entered the store. "Nice try. Dissipate!"

At his word, the glamour over Tara wavered slightly. It didn't break—Willow's power was a great deal stronger than Frasier's—but it rippled enough that everyone could see it. Dobson began to laugh. "A glamour. How charming! Unfortunately for you, unsuccessful. And how unfortunate for your little watchdog."

"Xander? Is that his name? Young chap, dark hair, somewhat stupid. Yes, that's it. He's ah... shall we say, in custody."

Just then, the phone rang. "Ah," Dobson said. "That should be one of my compatriots now, letting me know that the young man is safe. Be a good man and answer it, won't you, Mr. Giles?"

Giles did so. Dobson's side of the conversation was less than enlightening. "Dobson. Yes, Birdwell. The boy is secure? Yes. Very good. Awake, is he? Well, make sure he doesn't alert anyone to his presence. No, Birdwell, don't hit him again. We need him alive, you imbecile, remember? Just... just keep him quiet."

Dakota and Buffy exchanged a long, eloquent look during this conversation. Buffy nodded slightly and Dakota casually strolled to the back of the store. "I'm gonna use the bathroom," she announced to anyone and everyone, and then disappeared into the workroom.

Dobson turned to them. "Well, it would seem that each of us has something the other wants. Our terms are simple. Return Mr. Travers and we'll give you the boy's body. Return Mr. Travers and the rogue Potential Janna Markham, and we'll give you the boy alive. Return Mr. Travers, Janna Markham and the vampire, and we'll give you the boy alive and unharmed. Clear? Good. You obviously know the number where we can be reached. You have two hours to come to a decision."

The four Watchers left the store. They didn't know they were watched when they decided in quiet tones to split up on their way back to their motel, to lessen the chances of being caught. They split up then, each of them moving in a different direction. Dakota smiled and gave herself up to the demon.

She didn't kill them. It was hard to control herself, but she didn't kill them. She left them unconscious, drained almost to the danger point, but they were alive when she left them. She got Beecham first, in the alley behind the Magic Box, and then sped a block and a half west to nab Frasier in the deserted street outside the Espresso Pump. Two blocks north, she caught up with Campbell not far from the place where she herself had been caught by Darla. Then she called the magic shop on her cell phone and told Giles where she'd left the bodies. "Tell Buffy to meet me right now," she added, giving him an address. "Tell her to put some Slayer speed on it—I'm tracking Dobson."

Within five minutes, Dakota knew where Dobson was and had Buffy coming up the street toward her. They set off together and came up behind him as the woman was approaching the motel. Buffy held out a hand, warning Dakota to wait, and then crept up to the window of the room she was in.

"Yes, Birdwell. Where is the boy?" A pause. "Her Majesty's Secret Service." Another pause. "Yes. Yes. A crypt? Is that wise, in the cemetery at night on the Hellmouth? Ah. Garlic all round, you say? And holy water. Very good. Yes, I've given them two hours to hand over Mr. Travers, the girl and the vampire. Yes, call back in two hours. All right, then."

Buffy sneaked as quietly back to Dakota as possible. "They've got him in one of the cemeteries."

Buffy thought about it. "No idea. We'll take them consecutively. We've got the time."

They found him in the third cemetery they tried. Dakota called the shop on her cell and instructed them to bring all the weaponry they could carry, as well as Travers, and come on the double. Within twenty minutes, Faith, Giles, Tara, Willow, Janna and Travers were all in the cemetery with them. Buffy studied the door to the crypt and then called Faith and Dakota to her. "On three, kick," she instructed. They all took their stance and then, "One, two, three!" With a thunderous crash, the door came off its hinges and flew inward, taking out Birdwell and Charles. Smythe cringed back against the back wall. Xander, bound and gagged on the floor, yelled a muffled greeting to them. Janna darted in and removed the gag from his face.

"Hey, gang, glad you could make it," he quipped as Janna moved behind him to undo his bindings.

Giles and Willow followed Janna in and, the instant their backs were turned, Travers turned and darted away into the depths of the cemetery. Dakota caught the movement out of the corner of her eye and debated chasing him down, then decided that he wasn't worth the effort. They worked together to pull the three Watchers out of the tomb, and then Dakota dialed the motel to speak with Dobson.

"Hey, Dobson. Dakota Walsh. Listen, we decided not to take you up on your offer. We figured we'd come out on top if we just came and got Xander ourselves. So you don't need to worry about him. Beecham, Campbell and Frasier are all at Sunnydale Memorial—minor cases of spontaneous neck rupture and a little blood loss, you understand, but they'll be okay. And Birdwell, Smythe and Charles are over here at the cemetery, but they might be needing a hand, you understand. As for Travers, well, he took off. I don't give him too many chances alone in Sunnydale at night. Best of luck." And she disconnected.

Dobson hung up the phone and placed a transatlantic call to a contact she'd had standing by since the rogue Potential disappeared. "It's time," she said. And that was all. She smiled at the thought that her plans were all taking shape, and she clapped her hands gleefully. "How exciting. All my many years of planning, all come to fruition. Thank you, little Miss Markham. Divide and conquer. Yes, indeed, divide and conquer." As she spoke, her shape slowly changed until she was barely recognizable.

The thing that had been Dobson shambled out of its hotel room and toward the cemetery, determined to meet its prey on the way. It was too late—by the time it caught up with Quentin Travers, an ordinary vampire had already drained the man dry. The thing that had been Dobson roared its displeasure and took its anger out on the corpse. Then it shambled away towards Sunnydale Memorial Hospital, where at least it knew it could find three defenseless Watchers to finish its vendetta on.

It was Dobson again when it entered the hospital, inquired politely after the whereabouts of its compatriots in its gentle British accent, and took the elevator up to the fourth floor ICU. It was Dobson when it entered the room of Miss Beecham, who was sleeping quietly, and pulled the curtain shut around her. And it was Dobson again when it slipped out from behind the curtain, leaving her with enough blood to keep her alive for the few moments it would need to find Campbell and Frasier and dispatch them both as well. But between those moments, it was a Karvuil demon, last of its kind, which had been relentlessly hunted by Watchers and Slayers for centuries. The Council had thought the shape-changing demon extinct and, indeed, the ninety-two-year-old demon was near the end of its natural lifespan. But right now it had a mission to complete.

The cell phone at the demon's waist trilled as it left Frasier's room, and Dobson answered. It heard two words and began to smile a smile that was incredibly unpleasant as it closed itself into Campbell's room. Campbell was awake. "Dobson," he whispered. "Vampire."

"I'm dreadfully sorry, David," Dobson replied. "But I simply don't care. You see, even now, the Watchers in London are all dead. Explosives, you see. The Watchers of London are no more. And now, neither are you."

David tried to shriek in terror as Dobson began to shift and change before him into something like all the most horrible monsters Stephen King could ever have written of, all melded together. But his voice was weak, and frozen with fear besides. And the last thing he saw before the demon tore out his eyes was its horrible smile.

Dobson strolled out of the hospital, whistling a jaunty tune, and set its nose to the wind, trying to suss out where the Slayers might have stashed the last of the Watchers.

Giles could hear the phone ringing as he tried to unlock to door of the Magic Box, but the lock was stuck and he had to fight it to make it open. By the time he arrived at the telephone, the answering machine had already picked up. It whirred a bit as it sent its outgoing message, and then the microphone kicked on, blaring the incoming message to everyone in the room.

"Yes, hello, I'm trying to reach Mr. Giles. My name is Cassie Singleton and I'm... uh... I'm in a club with Buffy Summers... and there's been... something terrible has happened, and please, please, I need to talk to you -"

Giles snatched up the phone. "Cassie? Cassie, this is Mr. Giles. Are you saying you're a Potential Slayer?"

"Yes," she replied. "Oh, Mr. Giles, it's terrible, it's terrible, they're dead—they're all dead!" She broke down crying into the telephone.

"London. I'm in London. My Watcher brought me here last week from Sydney to train with some of the girls here. And they're dead—all the Watchers and some of the girls—all of them. It blew up. The building. It blew up right in the middle of London and we were standing out there watching it happen and we couldn't do anything for them."

"Um, Lani Kolinana, from Honolulu, Hawaii; Chimi Mishika from Tomi Village, Okinawa; Ivanka Kolenitska from Warsaw, Poland; Kerry Roberts from Miami, Florida; and Mishi Bugante from Bacolod City, the Philippines." After listing the names, Cassie sounded a bit calmer, which had been Giles's intent.

Cassie gave a harsh laugh. "In a pub off Portobello Road. We've enough money between the six of us to keep one room for a week and a half if we only eat twice a day."

"All right, Cassie, then be calm. The six of you stay where you are. I'll wire some funds this afternoon, and someone will be to fetch you by the end of next week. Stay low until we find out what's going on. And for God's sake, don't use your real names. Someone might know them."

"We're not," Cassie replied quickly. "We've told everyone we're on school holiday, and we're using different names. The room's under Katie Bell."

Giles turned to the crowd assembled behind him. "'The Chosen One shall initiate the destruction of the Watchers,' she said." He looked at the three Watchers who were currently being held by Slayers and vampire. "Well, I don't know which Chosen One it was, but it certainly was managed. That was one of the six surviving identified Potential Slayers. She and her companions witnessed the Council building exploding. All the Watchers and Potentials inside perished."

"Well, good," came a voice from the doorway. "That makes the last part of my job so much easier!"

Everyone turned to see the polite and unassuming Dobson standing in the doorway.

"Dobson?" Faith repeated. "Wait a minute… I remember you! I thought you looked familiar earlier. He told me your name was Greene."

"Yeah. She showed up at the prison with the papers that got me released. Her spokesmoron said the Council had decided I was rehabilitated enough and I was needed in Sunnydale, so they pulled strings to get me released."

"Well, I had to get you here somehow, didn't I?" Dobson inquired. "I couldn't very well kill you in prison. Too many witnesses. Thank you, by the way, Mr. Giles, for letting me know I missed some of the girls. It shouldn't be too hard to find them. Six terrified girls all huddled together in some hole somewhere in the bottom of London, should give off quite a scent." It laughed, and slowly shifted form to its true demonic aspect.

Birdwell, Smythe and Charles all fainted immediately, and the creature laughed as it whipped out a lightning-fast tentacle, wrapped it around Smythe's left leg, and pulled the hapless watcher to him. Before Buffy or Faith could move, a second tentacle had whipped itself into the unconscious man's mouth and down his throat, tearing him apart from the inside out.

Both Slayers went for weapons immediately, as the demon laughed. "Foolish humans! You think only you can be chosen? For I am the Chosen One of the Karvuil, and it is my mission to destroy the Council and all its remnants before I die!"

Buffy tossed an axe to Dakota, who charged into the fray with little thought for personal safety. She took a tentacle to the side and was flung into the wall. Her head struck solidly and she fell in a heap into the floor. Willow grabbed Janna as another tentacle headed their way, and dashed for the door to the exercise room. The tentacle missed the young Potential and instead got Birdwell, who was coming to and trying to scramble to safety. Xander grabbed Charles by the arms and pulled her into the corner under the stairs to the loft. Tara ducked behind the stairs with them and began to cast a protection spell around the Slayers. Faith and Buffy both sent crossbow bolts into the demon, which shrieked in anger and pain.

"No!" it screeched. "I am the Chosen! I am the last! It is prophesied! The Chosen One will initiate the destruction of the Watchers! It is written in books as old as time!"

"Buffy!" Giles shouted. "Faith!" They both turned to him and he waved his book at them. "Its heart is in its lower abdomen! Pierce the heart!"

Both Slayers aimed for the thing's lower abdomen and shot simultaneously into different parts of it. When the thing didn't immediately go down, they both reloaded and shot again. It began to teeter, and they both shot again. It began to look like a large, horrifying pincushion. Finally, after a fourth volley, the thing gargled out its last breath, fell to the floor, and died. Buffy glared at the horrifying corpse. "They said initiate, moron. They didn't say complete."

All was silence in the magic shop for a long time. And then Faith went to Dakota. "Are you okay?"

Dakota's eyes fluttered briefly, and she groaned. "Anybody get the number off that truck?"

Faith laughed gently and held up two fingers. "How many fingers am I holding up?"

"Oh, boy." Faith took Dakota by the hands, hauled her to her feet and led her to the table to sit. "Her brain's a little rattled, Giles," she said to the Watcher, who was slowly descending the staircase.

Willow and Janna came out of the back room, looking very shaken. Faith looked over at the witch. "Hey, Red, can you do anything about those bodies?"

Willow nodded shakily. "Yeah." With a glance at Giles, who nodded at her, she walked over to the carnage by the front door. "Incendere." The three bodies disappeared in a puff of flame.

Faith blinked. "Wow. You've come a long way from floatin' pencils, huh, Red? Ya know, my grandma could do that kinda stuff. I remember, when I was little, she used to make pictures to make me laugh."

Willow blinked, absorbing the new knowledge that Faith came from witchy blood, then suddenly she gave Faith a small smile. It was time to heal wounds.

"Oh," Dakota mumbled. "Go us." Then her eyes rolled back in her head once again and she passed out.

Shakily, she stood and shook her head. "I think, Mr. Giles, that I shall return to Europe, go to the south of France and live the remainder of my life quietly in seclusion on my family's estate. Good day." She stumbled out of the shop and down the street.

Xander grinned. "Just a knock on the head. I've proved the hardness of my skull before, right?"

Buffy stepped away from Dakota and drew Willow into the workout room and into her arms. "Baby, are you okay?"

Willow nodded, then suddenly she let the events of the last couple of days hit her and she began to cry. Buffy held her tightly and waited for the tears to stop, then kissed her thoroughly. "I love you, Willow. I love you."

"I love you too, Buffy. God, I love you so much." They embraced, lips meeting and tongues gently wrestling for dominance. Willow let Buffy win, then, and melted into her embrace.

The sound of a throat clearing brought them back to the world, and they turned to the door. Dakota stood there, leaning against the doorpost. "Hey."

"You guys need to come back," she said. "There's a lot of stuff that still needs to be worked out. We... I need you to come and hear about it."

"Leaving?" Dakota's face creased in a sardonic half-smile. "Yeah. It's time. I'm in the way of your relationship and you can't grow together in a healthy way with me in the mix."

The Scoobies were now gathered around the table, waiting for Buffy and Willow to join them. Dakota sat down again and Faith gently applied an ice pack to the back of the vampire's head. Giles cleared his throat. "There are six Slayer Potentials in London, keeping a room at a pub off Portobello Road. They and Janna are all that is left of the identified Slayer line. All pains must be taken to ensure their safety—this is a task which is as important as guarding the Hellmouth. Therefore, I must ask you, Faith, as an active Slayer, to take charge of these girls until we can figure out how to go about training them. There... there is a manor in the Cotswolds which is owned by the Watchers' Council. You might take them there. There will be a skeleton crew of staff there, but all the Watchers should have been in London today."

"Not a bad idea," Faith said. "I'll do it. But you gotta tell me how to get 'em there. I know from Cotswolds like I know from downtown Tokyo."

Giles nodded. "Then that's taken care of. Now, Janna, we promised to return you to your family, and this we will do. Dakota, would you be willing to transport her home to... wherever her family is?"

"And life resumes," Xander said softly. "I wonder if Bruce Wayne ever felt kind of let down once the adventure was over."

"Me, too," Dakota replied, gazing around at the stately oaks with their dripping Spanish moss. "But she liked San Francisco so much, she wanted to stay. And she and Elliott got along so well."

"Dawn liked him, too. She said he reminded her of Clem, only without the intense floppiness. And with horns." Janna grinned, picturing Clem, who they had both met just before leaving Sunnydale.

She turned to the vampire, pleading in her eyes. "You go. Maybe... maybe make sure they still want me."

Dakota sighed. "They still want you. But I'll go." She restarted the car, pulled across the highway and drove up the gravel driveway to the large house under the oak trees. It was an old house, not grand, but large and seemingly well-cared-for.

Dakota parked in front of the house, got out, and ascended the weathered steps to the front door, which stood open with a screen door shut in front of it. She peered into the depths of the house, saw no one, and banged on the door. "Hello?"

"Comin'," said a woman's voice from up the nearby stairs. In a moment, a woman in her late thirties, possibly early forties, descended the steps. In an accent as country as a turnip green she asked, "Kin I he'p you?"

"I am," the woman replied, opening the door and stepping out onto the porch. "And you are?"

Betty's face went through several remarkable changes, finally settling on a faint, reluctant hope-against-hope. "Yes, yes I am. Do you know somethin' 'bout her? Please!" She took Dakota's hands, squeezing them urgently. "Please, tell me what you know!"

Dakota smiled gently. "I know where she is, Mrs. Markham." She turned towards the car and nodded.

Janna climbed slowly out of the car and walked around it more like a woman on her way to the gallows than a girl coming home to her family.

Janna stopped at the porch step and scuffed her foot in the dirt for a moment, then looked up at her mother, fear on her face. "Yeah, Mama," she whispered. "It's me."

Jackie Markham flew down the steps and gathered Janna in a bone-crushing hug, crying and thanking God for her baby. Then she turned suddenly to the house. "Jimmy! Jimmy get out here! Jimmy, it's our own baby, come home to us! It's a miracle!"

A huge bear of a man came out of the house. Dakota quickly stepped aside as he came down the steps, the same disbelieving look on his face. "Janna? Janna, honey?"

Janna looked up at her father from her mother's embrace. "Yeah, Daddy, I'm home. I'm home, Daddy!"

He took her in his arms, swinging her up off the ground and holding her tightly to him, tears streaming down his face. He pulled Jackie into his embrace as well, and they held tightly to one another, the parents and their lost lamb.

A moment later, Dakota heard the scrape of feet in the hallway and turned to see a troop of children gathered against the screen, staring out at the scene before them. The youngest was about two years old, but the oldest was probably thirteen, and he looked as excited as his parents. He pushed the screen door open, leading the smaller children all out onto the porch.

"Come here, Jack," their daddy called out. "All y'all chi'ren, come here! It's Janna! It's your sister, come home to us at last!" With that, the children poured off the porch and surrounded Janna, reaching out to touch her with awed eyes and eager hands.

Dakota sighed and began the story the two of them had cooked up on the way to Georgia. She told Jackie, and then shared the telling with Janna as they told the rest of the gathered clan about Janna's kidnapping, weaving an elaborate but believable tale that culminated in Janna's escape upon discovering that another girl was being targeted for kidnap. Janna explained that she had wanted to warn the other girl, to be kept safe, and that she had succeeded on her mission, even at the cost of hitchhiking across America to do it.

The entire Markham clan was called in for a celebration, at which the family insisted Dakota be present. There were cousins, aunts, uncles, brothers, sisters and grandparents everywhere. Janna reintroduced herself to her truck-driving uncles, explaining the need for the subversion she'd used and obtaining their forgiveness easily. And sometime after dark but before midnight, Janna turned around to look for Dakota, only to discover that the vampire was gone. She ran to look for Dakota's car, but it, too, was gone. Later, she discovered a note upstairs in her bedroom.

Janna, honey, I'm sorry to have disappeared on you that way, but I had to. It would have been too hard to go any other way. And I've never been one for long goodbyes. You'll always know how to get in touch with us if you need us—the Magic Box, Buffy's or Xander's house, or the number below, in England. That's the retreat in the Cotswolds, where Faith is right now with the other Potentials. I hope you never get the call, sweetie, but if you do, I'll be there for you. Take care, and keep up your training. My love always, D.

Faith shielded her eyes against the unusually bright morning sun, trying to get a fix on the vehicle coming up the long and winding road toward the Academy. Upon arriving in the Cotswolds with her seven Potentials, she had set about rebuilding the Council using its own assets, but not calling it the Council of Watchers. Instead, she and her girls simply called it The Academy. They felt that name was sufficient.

It looked like a Jeep. Faith slapped her horse's reins gently against its neck, urging it down towards the road where she could head off the approacher if it was someone who didn't need to be there.

She stopped her horse in the road, and the Jeep slowed and stopped before her. Its occupant climbed out and grinned up at her. "Hey."

They were silent for a long moment, then Faith spoke again. "So... you here to stay?"

There was another long moment of silence, as eyes locked deliberately, the soul's windows open wide for viewing everything inside. Then, "Yeah. I want you to stay."

"Okay, then. It's this way." Faith turned her horse toward the east, heading down the road toward the Academy.

Dakota mumbled something to herself about how she always thought one was supposed to ride off into the sunset, then climbed back in the Jeep and followed the Slayer.

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To Conquer Death

By Rainne

Djgirl1978@bellsouth.net